


Expedition Wild West

by staranon



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, Fluff, M/M, astroneer au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-05 17:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10313168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staranon/pseuds/staranon
Summary: There's a reason why one of Ryan's terms to working on The Hunter's Achievement is to not be sent on an expedition. Captain Ramsey knows this. Captain Ramsey doesn't care. Captain Ramsey thinks this will be therapeutic for him. Ryan thinks he's being sent to an early grave when Captain Ramsey assigns him to a team with three very green ensigns. Captain Ramsey thinks he's over exaggerating.





	1. Sorola-6

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShadeOfAzmeinya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadeOfAzmeinya/gifts).



> Hello! I was inspired to write a little something based off of the first Astroneer Let's Play and lo and behold this was born! I will update on a weekly basis.
> 
> Chapter warnings: none

**Stardate 2655.1.12**

Expedition Wild West is slated to begin within a few weeks. The starship _The Hunter’s Achievement_ captained by Geoffrey Ramsey is to send down an exploratory team of four members to the planet Sorola-6 for future expeditions. The mission statement is to discover what resources the planet contains and if it is viable for future habitation. The mission is set to take over the course of one universal year.

Heading Expedition Wild West is Commander Ryan Haywood, a well-established scientist of _The Hunter’s Achievement._ Joining him are three ensigns fresh from the academy.

Ensign Gavin Free, archaeologist and xeno-linguist.

Ensign Michael Jones, navigator and engineer.

Ensign Jeremy Dooley, medical officer.

A diverse group meant to work well together and depend upon each other to survive. They will be given the following equipment.

                One standard base camp, including oxygen purifiers, solar panels, and a food replicator.  
                Rations to last one year  
                Hand-held excavators (commonly known as excavs)  
                Survival suits

The basics.

Conditions

Upon receiving the notice that Ryan will be part of the expedition—and then reading the names of those involved—he immediately goes to the Captain’s quarters to express ( _sic_. complain) himself.

“Captain, I would like to speak with you about Expedition Wild West and the team you’ve assigned me with.”

“How many times have I told you to just call me Geoff, _Commander Haywood_? I know the last ship you worked for was a real stick-up-your-ass kind of place, but you don’t need to act so formally around me.”

Ryan shifts uneasily on his feet. That’s the one thing he still hasn’t gotten used to since coming aboard _The Hunter’s Achievement,_ the amount of comradery and informality. Sure, his last time spent aboard a starship had ended rather terribly, but there’s still a need for formality in certain situations. Addressing your captain with respect is one of them. But not so on this ship.

“All right. _Geoff._ ” Still weird. ”I wanted to ask you why you assigned _three ensigns_ to the expedition force. Are you planning on this to be a suicide mission? Because that’s what you’re getting with three ensigns.”

Geoff simply waves him off. “They’ve got you don’t they?”

“And that’s another area of concern. Why me?”

“Why _not_ you? You’re the most brilliant scientist on this entire ship. If anyone can keep those idiots alive, it’s you.”

“I can do more for the crew by staying in my lab.”

“Nuh-huh. I’m not gonna hear it. You’ve been in that lab for three straight weeks. Lindsay’s been giving me updates on you. It’s time for you to get out and have a little fun in the sun. So pack your bags, you mad scientist. You’re going on an adventure.”

And that’s how Ryan finds himself locked in small quarters with three other men for a yearlong expedition.

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.1.28**

_The Hunter’s Achievement_ has arrived at Sorola-6. If all goes well, Geoff promises that Ryan can rename the planet to something a little more fancy. Ryan retorts by saying that he doubts Geoff is allowed to do that, but Geoff waves him off.

“Just because Gus discovered this planet doesn’t mean his name gets to stick on it forever. He already has, like, a thousand of them to his name. It’s time for a planet Ramsey or something.”

Ryan lets Geoff’s petty feud with an old friend be and focuses on cataloguing the things he’ll need for the expedition. He’s leaving in two hours, and you’d think the Captain would have better things to do in preparation of sending four of his crewmates to an uninhabited planet, but then there would be no need for First Officer Jack Pattillo who secretly runs the show on this ship.

They’ll be ferried down in a passenger ship. Ryan sees his stuff collected and leaves some final instructions with Lindsay, his fellow scientist.

“Don’t let anyone touch my stuff,” he says. “And take care of my plants.”

She smiles. “Will do. Have fun!”

Due to his position on the ship, he hasn’t had the opportunity to meet the three ensigns officially. He’s looked them upon the ship’s databases, but he has really no idea what to expect. He’s just hoping that they aren’t too incompetent for this expedition. Luckily, there is an emergency beacon at the base in case they run into serious issues and need an emergency evac. Ryan has a suspicious feeling that he might need to use the beacon. He isn’t always pessimistic, but upon first seeing the ensigns, he isn’t too hopeful about the expedition.

First impression of the ensigns? They’re all loud. They’re all energetic. They all know each other.

Geoff claps him on the shoulder as he surveys his motley force. “Relax. You’ll be fine. I know they don’t look like much, but they’ll impress you. I swear.”

“Thanks for the reassurances, sir.”

Geoff laughs and lightly pushes him off towards the passenger ship. “Send me a postcard!”

The ride down to Sorola-6 is a bumpy one, spent in too cramped of quarters a green pilot ferries them down.

“We’re just experiencing a bit of turbulence,” the young pilot—my name’s Kerry—says. The explanation doesn’t stop Ryan from white knuckling it all the way to the surface.

Once there, everyone on board is quick to unload their gear and bid Kerry goodbye. Once they’ve settled into the base, they all meet in the common room to figure out where to go from there. He’s the leader here despite how much he hates working in groups and delegating tasks. More people means more hazards to watch out for. And now he’s responsible for three other lives despite his own. If this expedition had been just for him, no problem! But this will create some issues.

“So,” he begins, trying not to fidget under three pairs of scrutinizing eyes. They’re all dependent on him to not screw this up, so he has to get his act together quickly. “I thought we’d start off with some prelim—preliminary systems checks to familiarize ourselves with, uh, the base. And then we can go outside and check the perimeter.”

The ensigns share some looks between them and the tall, lean one—Gavin—shrugs. “Sounds like a plan, Commander Haywood. Where do we start?”

It’s the tensest two hours of Ryan’s entire life. Not even his time on the near mutinous ship _The King’s Revenge_ could compare to this. The ensigns are all so full of questions, most of them inane or simply rhetorical. Like:

“What does this do?”

“Just read the manual, Jones.”

“Does this flashing light mean it’s on or off?”

“Flashing always means it’s on, Dooley.”

“What does this stand for again?”

Ryan’s about ready to have an aneurysm and soon he starts stuttering, a sign that the stress is getting too much to handle.

“J-just put everything away.  I th-think it’s time to go out and, uh, check the perimeter.”

Outside is a bit better. He’s not trapped in a small space with the ensigns any longer.

Their space suits are designed to hold a good six hours of oxygen. They’re light enough to be easily maneuverable. The oxygen reserves are for when they aren’t attached to the tethers at the base. Another added bonus is the HUD display in their helmet. That way they can see their vitals and oxygen reserve levels. Along with the built in comms units, the suits are state of the art.

Sorola-6 is near identical to any planet that the species _homo sapiens_ prefers. The gravity is a bit less but not that noticeable. The days are almost twenty-four universal hours long. The atmosphere shows high levels of oxygen but also some really dangerous levels of radon and nitrogen dioxide. It’ll never be safe for humans to live on this planet without some form of breathing apparatus, but that’s hardly stopped them before.

“Have any of you ever been on an expedition before?” he asks.

“Nope.”

“Nah.”

“Not me no.”

Ryan sighs internally. “Okay. So I need to explain what a tether is then. So our suits have oxygen reserves, but those are for emergencies only. Don’t get dependent on it—Ensign Free!”

Gavin, marked in a green environment suit, turns around from where he’s been wandering off to. “What?”

“What are you doing?”

“I thought I saw something glistening over there. Can’t you see it?”

The other ensigns also turn and look to where Gavin is pointing.

“We-we don’t have time for this!” Ryan says sternly, commanding their attention once more and drawing them back to the tethers. “If you don’t know how to use a simple tether, then you’re going to die.”

“Pessimist much,” Michael says, and the other ensigns snicker.

“This isn’t a game when you’re life is on the line. So just shut up and listen to me for once.”

The ensigns do just that, and Ryan feels his blood pressure drop. He explains how the tethers work. They are attached to the oxygen pumps at the base and will ferry a steady stream of oxygen to their suits so long as the base’s power supply is sufficient. They have to be placed no further apart than twenty feet at a time. They have a fair supply of the tethers to get them started, but preliminary sweeps of the planet have determined that they can easily replicate more tethers with the resources the planet holds.

After setting out a perimeter of tethers around the base, Ryan then shows them to the solar panels that will help them power the base. Maintenance for them is key, so he puts Michael, the engineer, on solar panel duty.

He shows them all how to use one of the hand-held excavators. The excavs are easy to use. They have several power settings that help them unearth certain areas to dig for resources. The ensigns all have a bit too much fun with them and Ryan makes them put them all back before they destroy the ground the base is sitting on. They have plenty of time to fool around with them later.

Back in the base, they go over their ration supplies and the next day’s events.

“Tomorrow we’ll go on a small scouting expedition,” Ryan says, dragging his fingers over a map of the base and its surrounding area of about one click. He wants to expand it, but they’ll need to set up satellites to do it. “One hour out and around to get a better look of the area and get a sense of what’s in store for us. Any questions?”

Nothing is said, and Ryan couldn’t be happier.

“All right. That’s all for the night then. You can . . . do whatever you want.”

He retreats to his shared room. The base is only large enough for two sleeping quarters. Michael and Gavin share one while Ryan is set up with Jeremy. He doesn’t have a problem with this, but it means he has very few places he’ll be able to just be by himself.

He pours over the information on his datapad and begins planning the events for the next week. He hears the other three ensigns fooling around in the more spacious common room. They seem close, and Ryan suddenly remembers that they all graduated from the same academy. Friends, then, from beforehand. How lucky.

He goes over the last received messages from _The Hunter’s Achievement_ before they flew out of range.

 _To: Commander Haywood  
From: Captain Ramsey  
                Hope you’re enjoying your new home and that you haven’t hopefully killed the ensigns yet. They aren’t that bad—they’re just like overeager, excitable puppies. Just put down some newspaper, and you’ll be good to go.  
                Also this isn’t going to end up like _ last time. _One push of that beacon, and we’ll haul ass to get you guys out._  
                _You’re not alone in this, buddy._  
 _Also, if you could not kill Gavin until at least six months are up, I’d appreciate it. I’ve got 20 credits riding on you._

Despite how aloof and/or reckless Geoff can be, he’s still a compassionate guy. He cares about all of his crewmates even if he can’t remember half their names on any given day.

_It’s not going to be like last time._

Gods, he hopes not.

Things settle down around 22:30. The ensigns get set up in their respective bunks. Ryan pretends he’s sleeping when Jeremy enters, but the ensign is light on his feet, settling in as quietly as he can muster and turns off his lights.

Ryan is left to stare up at the ceiling in the dark. Settling into a new environment always wreaks havoc with his sleeping habits. It’ll be a sleepless first nights until he’s not so worried that their oxygen levels will deplete before morning comes.

Twelve months. One year. He can do this.


	2. The Ensigns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back to chapter 2! Thanks for the support so far!
> 
> Chapter Warnings: some near death experiences and minor violence

**Stardate 2655.2.3**

Ryan gets the ensigns on a strict schedule so that they can optimize their time out around the base. The day starts at 06:00, much to the ensigns dismay.

Jeremy is quick to his feet considering he shares a room with Ryan, but he seems annoyed and is fairly non-communicative for the first hour he’s awake. Gavin keeps falling asleep: slumping on his bed when getting dressed; slumping in the table booth in the kitchen; falling asleep _again_ on his bed when he goes to collect his datapad. Michael is just, well, grumpy. Grumpy with a capital ‘g.’

He frowns once he starts drinking the coffee he just replicated. “What the fuck is this shit?”

“Never had replicator coffee before, Jones?” Ryan asks, as he swipes his way through his datapad.

“This shit is supposed to be coffee?” And _wow_ he’s loud for this early in the morning. Jeremy just pulls his hood over his head and sets his head on the table. Gavin is nowhere to be found. “And we’re supposed to live on this for a year?! Are you fucking kidding me?!”

“Or you could just _not_ drink coffee.”

“And do what with my life, Ryan? Wake up with the sun?”

Michael slumps down beside Jeremy and tucks into his food, leaving no room for a retort, not that Ryan could really think of one. He’s not really a coffee drinker, so waking up naturally has never been a problem for him.

That’s his morning, more or less. By 08:00, the ensigns are up and ready to take on the day. They eagerly pull on the survival suits and head out to complete the tasks Ryan has set out for them.

At 10:00, they have a small break inside the base. At 12:00 they have lunch. Throughout the afternoon, they do minor tasks but for the most part, the ensigns are allowed to do as they please, getting familiar and comfortable with their surroundings while Ryan sticks mostly to the lab inside the base. There’s not a lot of room to it, but at least it’s quiet.

Dinner is promptly at 18:00 and from there, they can have downtime. The base has come with a few amenities to entertain the force during their stay. The standard datapad novels, holo-games that include strategy and card-based games, and a few more complex games that the ensigns take a shine to. Racing games, precision games, open world games. Clearly, that was Geoff’s contribution to the expedition, and Ryan is a bit grateful for it because in the hours where they don’t need to do anything, Ryan would go stir crazy with the ensigns’ undivided attention. This way he can do some preliminary work quietly in the lab.

He had Gavin conduct some topographical scans of the surrounding area. Judging from the scans, it seems like the planet has a vast network of caves and tunnels just a few feet below the planet’s surface. The caves seems vast, ranging from a depth of ten to twenty feet. It’ll be interesting to see what lies below. Seeing as Gavin is the more adventurous type, often going out on his own without telling anyone which prompts a worried Michael to shout his name over the comms—nearly bursting Ryan and Jeremy’s eardrums—which then prompts a meek Gavin to reply “what?”. Ryan figures that if he lets Gavin off the leash a little bit, he won’t be so prone to wandering off. Some creative energy channelling will do them all some good.

Ryan extricates himself from the lab around 20:30 that night, intending on getting some water and maybe something to eat. The ensigns have been enjoying a rather noisy game in the common room, taking up the sofa and all in each other’s space. They’re so friendly with each other that it leaves Ryan feeling left out. He doesn’t know why he’s feeling this way. In their relative isolation, it’s common for people on expeditions like this one to form strong emotional and often physical bonds with one another. It’s a perfectly _human_ response, and Ryan has some experience with those type of bonds—despite how _that_ situation ended—but he feels like an outsider here and it leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

When he enters the common space and crosses over to the nearest replicator , the ensigns quiet. He can feel their eyes on him.

“Hey, uh, Ryan,” Jeremy says. “Wanna join in? There’s room for a fourth player.”

Ryan looks over his shoulder, and the ensigns are all looking at him. Jeremy open and inviting. Gavin neutral but accepting. Michael, wary but neutral.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I have some work to do anyway, so.” He takes his refreshments back to the lab and focuses on the graphs once more. He picks up on hushed voices in the other room. It’s hard not to in such a confined space.

“What is his issue?” Michael says.

“Lay off him, Michael,” Jeremy responds. “You know what he’s like.”

“Yeah, an unfriendly workaholic. He’s basically a robot.”

“What do you got against robots, Michael?” Gavin asks. “What did they ever do to you?”

“They didn’t treat me as anything other than an ensign for starters. Let’s be real here. He doesn’t want to be friends with us, so why are we even bothering?”

The ensigns are quiet for a time before Gavin breaks the uncomfortable silence.

“What if he has like an allergy to emotions and that’s why he doesn’t form friendships?” And that’s Gavin. Always trying to break a tense situation with a ridiculous question.

“What kind of question is that?” Michael says.

The ensigns laugh it off a bit before returning to the videogame, at which point Ryan lays his head upon his arms on the worktable.

He wonders if Geoff sent him down here to make friends. He has a reputation on board to be unfriendly—what he calls ‘clinical’ and ‘professional’—but he’s just doing his job. Mixing the personal with the professional is always a mistake, because in the Fleet, people get transferred. Mortality rates are fairly high in their line of work, and Ryan prefers being alone over getting attached to someone.

(But that doesn’t mean being talked behind his back doesn’t hurt; that he sometimes watches from afar longingly; that he wishes he could have something that the three ensigns do; that he wants something tangible and real and warm and lasting.)

He shakes his head and focuses on his work. It’s better this way.

He takes a brief pause in his work to take a shower. He’d prefer one with real water and clouds of steam, but they don’t have that luxury here. Sonic showers are designed to scan one’s body and eradicate any germs, bacterium, and anything that is classified as dirt with beams of a safe form of ultraviolet light. It doesn’t leave anyone feeling properly clean, but it takes less than a minute: dependable and efficient.

He gets out and gets dressed, keeping to the lab as the ensigns take a pause in their gaming to stretch and eat. It’s weird how Ryan moves around with them. They skirt around each other. They know Ryan likes having his space, his personal boundaries, and they respect that. But they also don’t look at him when they pass by. He’s just an obstacle meant to be overcome.

(And if that doesn’t send a stab through his heart for some reason; gods, it’s barely been a week and why does he feel like this?)

_Stop self-deprecating,_ his inner voice says. _You’re here for a job. Not to make friends. Get over it._

He doesn’t get much sleep that night.

* * *

**Stardate 2655.2.13**

They’re making progress in the expedition. They’re now able to take the materials they find and break them down into their basic components to create and expand their own base. It’s back breaking work for the most part, but the ensigns are proud with their progress and so is Ryan, although more quietly.

He puts Gavin in charge of their first proper expedition.

“I want you to take charge and dig below the surface. I want to see what’s under there.”

The look on Gavin’s face is surprising to say the least. “Really? You want me to be the first to go down there?”

“Um, yeah?”

“Aw, thanks, Ryan!”

Gavin eagerly bounds off with his excav and chooses a spot far enough from the base to begin digging. Ryan leaves him to it but reminds him about the use of tethers. “And don’t dig yourself into a hole. Make sure you can dig yourself out again.”

“Yeah, but Michael’ll dig me out. Won’t you, boi?”

“I’ll always be there for you, Gavin.”

This marks a new chapter in the expedition. 

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.2.15**

“Has anyone heard from Gavin?” Ryan asks over the comms. He’s down in one of the many tunnels underground. He’s doing simple bio scans of the fauna found in the caves. They’re exuding some interesting properties such as helium and hydrogen compounds, and Ryan wants to know why. That and everything so far seems to have some sort of bioluminescent quality to it, making the caves glow in greens and blues.

“Mm, nope,” Michael responds.

“Yeah, he’s been kind of quiet,” Jeremy says. “Hey, Gav, where are you?”

He doesn’t respond.

“Ensign Free, please respond,” Ryan says.

Again nothing.

“Wasn’t he down there with you, Ryan?” Michael asks.

“He was. I’ll take a look around. Stand by.”

Ryan leaves his belongings and wanders off down the cave. He finds a pair of footprints and follows them further, laying tethers as he goes. He follows the footprints further into the cave, going deeper and deeper, occasionally calling out for Gavin and realizing that he can’t hear Michael or Jeremy very clearly. He must be too far down, and maybe that’s why Gavin isn’t responding. Adding transmitters should be added to their to-do list before they explain any further.

He bumps up the light output on his suit when he spots Gavin’s crumpled form. It looks like he just collapsed.

Ryan drops one last tether and rushes over to him. He carefully turns Gavin onto his back. “Gavin? Come on, buddy.” He scans Gavin’s bios. Oxygen levels are dangerously low, and Ryan can see the bluish tinge to his lips. He quickly connects Gavin to the oxygen tether.

 “You idiot,” he mutters, waiting for Gavin’s heartrate to rise. His heart is beating hard in his chest. He’s worried. He’s worried that he’s too late. He’s got none of the medical equipment here to handle this properly, so he scoops Gavin up in his arms and begins the long trek back out of the caves and to the surface.

Michael and Jeremy begin chattering in his ear when he’s in range of the comms.

“I’ve got him,” Ryan grunts. “But he’s out cold. He forgot to tether himself and replenish his oxygen intake. Jeremy, I need you to be ready in the med center once we make it to the surface. Michael,  I need you down here with me to help carry him up.”

“Got it.”

“Be right there.”

Together he and Michael carry Gavin out of the caves and into the base where Jeremy is set up, ready and waiting to receive him and begin monitoring him. They make quick work of removing his suit and helmet. Jeremy carefully slips an oxygen mask over his head, gets him hooked up to a saline line, and starts observing his signatures.

“He’s stabilized,” Jeremy says. “He should be coming around—hey, Gavvy!”

Gavin’s eyes flutter and he groans.

“Gavin, you fuck!” Michael brushes past Ryan to stand next to Gavin’s bedside, slipping his hand into the other’s. “How many times do we have to tell you to stay on the tethers?!”

Gavin giggles at Michael’s outrage as he always does. He curls his body towards him as Jeremy untangles him from the IV line.

“What’s the verdict, Nurse Dooley?” Gavin asks.

“Oxygen deprivation, but it doesn’t seem to have affected you that badly. I’ll run some scans to make sure nothing’s wrong, but after some bedrest, you should be good to go.”

“Where’s Ryan?” Gavin asks. The other ensigns looks at Ryan pointedly as he hovers near the back of the room, acutely uncomfortable with the amount of camaraderie displayed between the three of them.

Ryan steps forward more out of the expected pressure to do so than wanting to. “I know this may be your first expedition, Ensign Free, but even a first year academic could grasp the importance of a basic oxygen tether. I mean, wh-what were you thinking just wandering off like that without th-the basic consideration of-of your own well-being? You’re lucky that I even found you in t-time. Next time we might not be so lucky.”

Gavin looks thoroughly berated, and Ryan feels furious. Not at the ensign, but at himself. He quickly flees the med bay in favour of his own quarters. He shuts the door and sits down on his bunk with his head in his hands.

Okay. So he handled that poorly. He could’ve done something, he doesn’t know, softer? More caring? More friendly towards Gavin? The guy did just go through a near death experience. But Ryan is his commander. He needs to keep it professional and reprimand Gavin when it’s necessary. He can’t let his feelings—however jumbled they might be—cloud his judgement. But he didn’t need to come off so strong either.

Another potential friendship fucked up yet again.

He hides in his room the rest of the night, but listens to the ensigns talk through the walls.

“—carried me all the way here?”

“Almost. I helped the last bit, but yeah. Fucking fairy-taled that shit all the way to the surface.”

“That’s lovely. Lovely Ryan.”

“Still a bit prickly though.”

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.3.5**

“Michael, you’re with me today,” Ryan says at the morning briefing. “We’ll be going in the caves to catalogue the plants. Gavin and Jeremy, I want you two to check out those oxygen reserves we found the other day. We need to know more about these bladder properties that everything on this planet seems to have. The properties could be useful to us in the future.”

“Ay ay, Captain!” Gavin gives him a two fingered salute.

Michael doesn’t seem all that pleased with being partnered up with Ryan, but Ryan doesn’t care. All he has to do really is hold a light or two for Ryan and transcribe. Nothing too strenuous.

They descend in silence. Of all the ensigns, Michael seems the most hostile towards him. Maybe it has to do with how Ryan treated Gavin after the oxygen scare, or maybe Michael just doesn’t like him on principle. Either way, Ryan appreciates the silence. That won’t complicate things.

The plants that grow in the caves are fairly large and bulbous. Ryan has watched them from afar before and seen how they burst open. It’s either a defense mechanism or it’s part of its life cycle, as a rather pointy entity is exposed after the protective casing erupts. The entity is what Ryan thinks of to be a seed, and the points are like a root system, clinging onto the ground and refusing to budge. Fascinating in a way.

They get set up near a cluster of these plants and begin recording what they see. Ryan sets Michael on the task of photographic evidence while he begins to take notes of their physical features and whatever else he can notice. It’s quiet, and Ryan gets engrossed in his work. He has a special love for xenobiology. It was his passion in the academy and what led him to the Fleet in the first place. All those worlds. All new discoveries. The endless possibilities were tantalizing.

“This one plant is pulsing all weird and shit,” Michael says over the comms.

“Keep your distance then,” Ryan says. “That might be a sign that it’ll burst. These plants have a tendency to do that.”

“Then why are we down here studying them if they could kill us?”

“We’re astroneers, Michael. Everything can kill us.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Michael murmurs.

In the space of a heartbeat, there’s a deafening _POP_ and the ground shakes beneath Ryan’s feet. Dread fills his chest. He looks over to where Michael should be and sees his flailing limbs and hears his wheezing, choking breath over the comms.

_“MICHAEL!”_

He grabs his packs and races over to Michael. The pulsating plant has indeed exploded and debris has torn holes in Michael’s suit and punctured the glass of his helmet. He’s chocking on the nitrogen dioxide and radon.

“What was that noise?” Jeremy asks over the comms.

“We need a stretcher in the caves,” Ryan says as he fumbles for the adhesive patch kits from his pack. “Michael’s taken a hit and needs to be evacuated _immediately._ ”

“Why? what’s happened?” Gavin asks, the worry in his voice making itself known.

“I don’t have time to explain! Just hurry!”

“On it!” Jeremy replies.

Ryan focuses on the task at hand. “It’s going to be okay,” he says as calmly as he can to Michael, but he’s not sure how well the ensign is listening while he chokes to death. He seals the crack on the helmet first before making quick work to seal the tears in the environment suit. Once they’re all sealed, Michael is able to take a proper breath of non-poisonous air, but it’s wheezy and crackling. Ryan checks his vitals. His heart is racing which is too be expected, but everything seems okay until he starts coughing up blood.

Jeremy and Gavin arrive quickly enough, and they retreat from the caves to the med center where Jeremy sets to work immediately. He preps a saline bag, gets an oxygen mask on Michael, and tells him in a soothing yet commanding tone to breathe in very deeply. Michael looks up at Jeremy like his life depends upon it, eyes wide in the first instance of fear Ryan has ever seen the ensign show. Gavin is hovering close to the bedside, and Ryan pulls him away.

“Let Jeremy do his work,” he says.

Gavin folds his arms over his chest and remains silent. Ryan retreats from the med center and goes to the kitchen to get a drink. The cold water he drinks abates the nauseous feeling that’s been riling in his gut since the explosion. It could’ve been worse, he tells himself. He acted quickly. He patched the suit, and Michael is here in good hands. He’ll be fine.

(Getting the look of a scared and terrified Michael out of his head takes some time.)

When Michael is more stable and not coughing up blood –“Burst blood vessels in his throat,” Jeremy says—Ryan heads back to the caves to collect the abandoned gear. There won’t be any more expedition work done today. He returns to the base and starts analyzing the data. It’s all he can do to keep his mind occupied.

Gavin finds him hunched over his datapad in the common room. The med center and the lab are basically the same room, and Ryan can’t stay in the med center. Not while Michael is still hacking and wheezing and spitting up globs of bloody phlegm.

“Hey, Ryan.” Gavin slinks into the other side of the booth across from Ryan.

“Hi, Gavin.” He doesn’t look up from his datapad. “Do you need something?”

“No. I was just wondering if you needed anything.”

Ryan frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re the one who was down there when it happened. Are you all right?”

“Me? I’m fine.”

Whatever Gavin was hoping to get out of him, Ryan has no interest in talking. He types out some notes on the datapad.

Gavin says nothing more but retreats for a moment to use the replicator and conjure up a drink. He returns to the table and sits across from Ryan in silence. Ryan doesn’t know if Gavin is sitting there because he feels comforted by Ryan’s presence, or if he thinks Ryan needs someone close by. Ryan doesn’t care if it’s either scenario. He’s touched that Gavin stays.

It’s a late night that day. Gavin is red-eyed from exhaustion, and Ryan orders him to get some rest.

He checks up on Jeremy and Michael in the med center before he drops off as well. Although, he doubts he’ll be getting much sleep tonight at all.

“How is he?” he asks Jeremy quietly, because Michael appears to be sleeping.

“He’s doing fine,” Jeremy replies. “His lungs are probably a bit irritated from the toxins, but no lasting damage. He’ll be down for a week, though. It’ll take time and antibiotics for the inflammation to go down. What I’m worried about is him developing bronchitis or pneumonia. It’s a bit iffy right now.”

Ryan nods. “I’ll watch over him for now. Why don’t you go lie down for a while? I’ll wake you if he takes a sudden turn for the worse.”

Jeremy seems reluctant at first, but then he yawns. “All right. Wake me in a couple hours, though, all right?”

“Of course.”

Jeremy pads away, and Ryan settles himself down on a chair next to Michael’s bedside. The ensign definitely seems more relaxed now than before, more peaceful. That eases the tight feeling in Ryan’s stomach.

“You’re all right, Ryan,” Michael says quietly, eyes still closed.

Ryan looks up, but Michael says nothing more. Ryan thinks nothing of it.

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.4.16**

They have their ‘dos and don’ts’ after the first few months of living on Sorola-6.

Do make sure you have enough tethers if you plan a long trip away from the base.

Don’t touch anything that is pulsing.

Do keep an eye on the sun, because nighttime on a planet where everything glows is slightly terrifying.

Don’t make obscure foods from the replicator and make Gavin eat it. Just don’t.

It’s easy and now that they have a routine established, they act less formally around each other. Even Ryan has found a different way to act with the ensigns. They respond better with encouragement than they do critiques (but then again, who isn’t a fan of positive reinforcement?). During their slow days, Gavin is prone to ask inane questions over the comms, and Ryan has taken to responding to them out of sheer boredom more than anything else. But now he finds it entertaining. Gavin has an interesting way of speaking and thinking. While it may at first seem like he’s speaking nonsense, he’s actually quite a smart individual. The questions he comes up with are often absurd, but they’re fun to unpack.

(And it’s nice to hear the ensigns’ laughs over the comms, sounds that always warm Ryan’s heart.)

He begins working more in the common space than in the lab. He doesn’t join in on the ensigns’ gaming time, but he watches and he comments and he smiles as they have fun. They always invite him to join, but he’s not ready yet. Soon, but not yet.

On this day, he’s given the ensigns the ability to do whatever they like. Gavin goes on a long distance trip to extend their comms’ signal. Michael is working on a solution to boost their outdoor power supply during the night. And Jeremy just wants to dig. Ryan is studying the properties of the oxygen pouches they unearth every once in a while. Just how can oxygen be trapped in a thin barrier like that? It’s perplexing and also driving Ryan up the wall.

As the sun begins to touch the horizon, Ryan calls it a day. He packs up his gear and makes the trek back to the base.

“Everyone check in,” he says.

“Ensign Gavino reporting in!”

“Ensign Vinny Jones reporting in.”

Ryan smirks. Where do they keep coming up with those ridiculous nicknames? Half the time their names appear on his HUD, they’re always different.

“Ensign Dooley, what’s your status?”

“Uh.”

“Where you at, Rimmy Tim?” Gavin asks.

“Well, I’m about one click from the base and about thirty feet underground.”

“So you’re in the caves?” Michael asks.

“Not exactly.”

“I’m making my way to you,” Ryan says, pulling up on his HUD the positions of the ensigns in relation to his own. He heads over to Jeremy’s blip and nearly falls into a hole. It’s not an uncommon thing to fall into a hole on Sorola-6, but this is not one of those holes. What Jeremy has done is that he’s taken his excav and dug straight down. He’s made a line of tethers to reach him, but the walls are smooth and vertical all the way down. He’s thoroughly stuck.

“Jeremy?” Ryan says, peering into the hole. He can see the suit lights at the bottom of the hole.

“Oh, hey, Ryan. Little help?”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I just decided to dig straight down. For no apparent reason.”

Ryan doesn’t even know how to respond to this. He thought that they were past this kind of stuff.

“Also, I’m not getting any power from the base, so I’m real stuck down here.”

“Lil J, what are you doing down there?” Gavin asks over the comms.

Ryan simply sighs. “Well, here’s the thing. You’re probably going to be sleeping down there for tonight, buddy.”

“Oh no,” Jeremy says.

“Yeah.”

“But, Ryan, I don’t want to be alone down here.”

“Yeah, well, you should’ve thought of that before you dug straight down to the center of the planet.”

“Fair point.”

“Just wait here. I’ll send down one of those pop-up tent things. That way you can, like, take off your helmet and eat something.”

“Thanks, Ryan! You’re the best.”

He goes back to the base and reports the situation to the other ensigns. He takes two emergency pop-up kits with him and goes back to the hole. He sends one down on the tether line and keeps the second for himself.

“What are you doing up there, Ry?” Jeremy asks.

“Well, I can’t just leave you out here.”

“Awww! So you do care about me?”

“Of course I care just—sh-shut up!” He’s flustered by the statement. _Of course_ he cares about Jeremy. He’s responsible for him after all. That’s all this is.

(But then why is he pitching a tent like from a very old movie and sleeping out under the stars? Jeremy isn’t even that far from the base. He has a steady air supply. He’s got his kit. He doesn’t need Ryan to sit on the edge of the hole the entire night. So then why is he here?)

“What are you doing up there, Ry?” Jeremy asks again after a while.

“Charting the stars.” He’s on his back outside of his prepared kit. The kit is large enough to lie down in, but nothing more. It’s built to allow an astroneer to take off their helmet and breathe recycled air so that they can eat and drink. It’s _very_ basic.

“That sounds nice. You know, the planet I grew up on was basically one large city. You couldn’t see anything past the light pollution.”

“Is that why you became an astroneer?”

“One of them. I just hated living in a stacked city, you know? Why would you if there’s all this beyond the planet’s surface?”

Ryan hums thoughtfully. He understands it. He wanted a life that meant more than just fields and farms, something that challenged his intellect and excited him.

“How are you doing, Jeremy?”

“I’m just fine, Ryan. Thanks for sticking it out with me.”

“Just doing my job, Jeremy.”

“Still. I appreciate it.”

Ryan’s left wondering after that night if their crew dynamics are beginning to change. He’s always noticed how close the ensigns are with each other. But he always chucked that up them being a part of the same academy. But maybe now it’s something more, something more than just close friendship.

That’s the special thing about _The Hunter’s Achievement._ Ever since he set foot on that ship two years ago, he’s noticed how the crew interact with each other. It’s no secret that Captain Ramsey and First Officer Pattillo are in a committed relationship. But it just seems like that everyone is somehow attached to everyone else, like the ensigns. Geoff has no qualms about work relationships, since they usually all live with each other for months at a time before they need to dock somewhere. It’s just not something Ryan is accustomed to.

Ryan who worked on _The King’s Vengeance_ for only a brief period, who had to survive a near mutinous crew, who was nearly abandoned on a planetary expedit—

No. No more of that tonight. It’s in the past. It doesn’t need to be considered anymore.

(But gods, does he wish he could just leave that all behind and free himself to the love and acceptance and openness he’s been exposed to on _The Hunter’s Achievement._ )


	3. The King's Vengeance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All aboard the angst train!

**Stardate 2655.5.10**

Today is the day that Ryan first joins in on the ensigns’ game night. Jeremy holds out the controller, and Ryan takes it willingly. He only plays for a few rounds before retreating to the lab, but it marks a change in how the ensigns treat him.

Due to their many health scares and how Ryan has reacted and treated them, they start treating him as less of an authority figure and more of a friend on the outside of the social group. They’re reaching out to him, he realizes, and he finds himself responding more and more to their invitations.

It starts with Jeremy. The ensign likes to dig—that much is clear from the Hole Incident. He likes going further and deeper into the planet to unearth all its secrets. Ryan often joins him because he’s the one who usually discovers something interesting. Plus Michael isn’t too keen on going down into the tunnels after the plant explosion and Gavin is also much more content to run around on the surface.

It’s a fairly quiet day. The ensigns chatter amongst each other with Ryan throwing his two cents in every once in a while. When Jeremy gasps, Ryan perks up.

“Everything all right, Jeremy?”

“Ryan,” he says in that breathless tone he picks up when he’s excited. “Ryan, come here. You _have_ to see this.”

Confused, Ryan sets aside his gear and makes his way over to where Jeremy’s blips appears on his HUD.

Since the Hole Incident, Ryan has taken time to show the ensigns how to properly dig a hole downwards so they don’t get stuck. He’s proud to see that Jeremy has listened to him, but still, he has this thing where he just likes to dig _straight down._

“Jeremy?” he asks, surveying the hole and the trail of tethers leading downward.

“Yeah! Come on down! There’s something I want you to see!”

Ryan makes his way carefully down the sloping edge circling the circumference of the hole. Down, down, down until his ears pop.

“Where you at, Jer?”

“Just keep going down. You’ll see it soon.”

Ryan raises the light output on his suit and continues his path down until he reaches the very bottom. Jeremy continued to dig off to the left, and Ryan comes face to face with the discovery.

It’s a giant sphere. It takes up the entire chamber, and Jeremy seems to have unearthed the entire thing. Ryan frowns at it, as he steps around to get closer to Jeremy, because it just seems to be _there._ It’s not really floating or hovering. It just _is._ The notion unsettles him.

“Ryan, meet God!” Jeremy proudly proclaims, showing off the sphere with a grand gesture.

“What is it?” Ryan asks. He holds up his bio scanner to try and determine what compounds it’s made of. He gets a lot of carbon, but also the mixes of helium and hydrogen that seem to exist in everything on this planet.

“I don’t know, man! Isn’t it cool?”

“It’s . . . something. Come on, let’s take some readings and dig around a bit. I want to see if there are more like this.”

“Okay!”

While the sight of the sphere and the largely _unknown_ aspects of it unsettle Ryan for some strange reason—it shouldn’t physically exist; it’s an impossibility—Jeremy’s enthusiasm and pride at having discovered something so mystifying lightens the mood.

“I get to put my name on this!” he says. “The Dooley Sphere! The Orb of God!”

The other ensigns laugh over the comms, and Ryan laughs quietly as well. It’s ridiculous, naming the sphere _God_ of all things. It’ll most likely receive some sort of number-letter code when someone else goes over the expedition files, but for them, for the members of Expedition Wild West, the sphere is God.

(And what gets Ryan the most is that Jeremy contacted him _first._ He didn’t ask Gavin or Michael to come down. He asked Ryan. He wanted Ryan to come down because—well, Ryan can only speculate the reasons why Jeremy asked him, but Ryan is touched by the sentiment.)

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.5.29**

Where Jeremy seeks people out to join in on his enthusiasm, Michael is more wary about opening himself up to people he’s perceived to be a threat. It’s no lie that he’s taken the longest to warm up to Ryan, and Ryan doesn’t blame him. His cold and detached manner often rubs people the wrong way. What he calls professionalism is often misconstrued as being a bastard and a douche. He never cared before, but now he does. At least with these three ensigns.

As the engineer on their expedition, Michael is put in charge of the base’s expansion. The compounds they unearth and the pieces of non-planetary debris that Gavin always stumbles upon are able to be broken down and transformed into new panels that they can use to extend the base. Construction of extending the lab is slow going, but Michael always looks pleased with his progress. Over the few months they’ve been here, he’s managed to fix the issue of their nighttime power supply and store the energy that the solar panels  and wind turbines that he’s also managed to build gather during the course of the day. It’s a huge relief to not have to hustle back home as soon as the sun touches the horizon anymore. While nighttime on Sorola-6 is still creepy as fuck, they don’t have to fear it with some impending doom as soon as all their equipment stops working.

Ryan’s proud of Michael. As much as the ensign does swear— _gods,_ he swears so much—and rages about when something doesn’t go right, he’s actually pretty capable on his own. Even when the others try to help, he usually shakes his head and says he’s fine. To Gavin he says “Gavin, _fuck. off”_ in a really cold tone that Gavin usually responds to with a giggle before running off to avoid Michael’s wrath, but overall Ryan’s pleased with the progress he’s making. He’s quiet about it, taking a shy pride in his work and waving off the compliments the others give him. It’s endearing, and Ryan is always sure to let Michael know how much he appreciates his efforts.

“What are you doing there, Michael?” he asks.

Michael is set up outside of the base. It looks like he’s taking a break from the expansion  and working on something else.

Michael looks up at him as his shadow looms over the collection of scrap metal and gears. “Oh,” he says. “Just, uh, you know, doing stuff.”

“Like what?” Ryan crouches down and looks at what Michael is constructing.

“Well, I got a schematic of like a dune buggy, and I was thinking with all these spare parts that Gavin keeps dragging home that I could, you know, build something like that I guess.” He shrugs it off, but Ryan is astounded that Michael decided to take a schematic and build something from the ground up based on nothing but spare parts.

“That is amazing!” Ryan takes a closer look at what Michael has. So far it looks to be like the base of an engine block, and further behind him is what seems to be the mock-up of a frame. “You’ll have to keep me updated on this. That’ll be awesome!”

And there’s that soft, small smile Michael has whenever he’s praised for his work. It makes him so _vulnerable_ for a moment, but Ryan is sure not to go further than he’s welcomed to. He stands. “Keep up the good work, Vinny.”

“I’m gonna fucking kill Gavin for that.”

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.6.17**

“You know what, Gavin,” Ryan says. “Why don’t you go out on a long expedition tomorrow?”

“For real?”

“Yeah. I mean, we’re doing fine right now. If you wanted to take some supplies and a kit and go off for a few days, I think we’d be fine without you.”

“Aw, thanks, Ryan!”

Michael turns to look at Ryan as they sit down to eat their replicated food. “You’re just gonna send him out there?”

“Yeah,” Ryan says slowly. “He should be fine.”

“He’s _Gavin,_ ” Michael retorts. “The idiot forgets about his tethers half the time anyway.”

“I’m not that bad, Michael,” Gavin says as he sits down and crowds Michael up against the wall. Michael shoves him off.

“You’re the worst! You’ve nearly died, like, three times because you keep forgetting _to lay down fucking tethers!_ ”

( _Gods give me strength_.)

“Settle down, children,” Ryan says, and the ensigns quiet. “This expedition could be good for Gavin. If he only has himself to depend upon, maybe he’ll be more careful about the tethers.”

“Yeah, Michael,” Gavin says. “It’s time for me to jump out of the nest as it were.”

“He’ll be in constant contact with us,” Ryan assures Michael. “You’ve personally extended the range of our comms. And Gavin knows to keep himself tethered. Don’t you, Gavin?” He looks pointedly at Gavin until he sheepishly nods.

“I’ll be fine, boi.”

“You better be,” Michael says. “Because you are going to hear about it if I have to run after your dumbass.”

“It’s settled then,” Ryan says and closes the conversation.

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.6.18**

Gavin plans on leaving for a total of five days. He’s loaded down with tethers but plans on setting up somewhere semi-permanent to have enough time to take notes and observations. As the resident archaeologist and xeno-linguist, it’s high time he gets to use his skills in the area he’s most skilled in. Plus, they really don’t know if there were civilizations on this planet beforehand, and it would be interesting to see what Gavin can dig up. Sorola-6 is certainly covered in a lot of space debris, but Gavin wants to know if there is anything more to it than just the exploding plants and . . . _God._

Ryan double checks his packing before he goes off. He has more than enough food and water to last him the trip there and back. His kit is air tight and in optimal condition. Michael has even constructed a type of sled to make it easier to carry all the things Gavin needs. Jeremy makes sure he has enough basic medical supplies in case he hurts himself. (It’s Gavin. _Of course_ he’s going to hurt himself at least a little bit.)

“Thanks for the swell send off, boys,” he says as he stands at the edge of their base, looking like a kid about to head off to their first day of school.

“Remember, Gavin, check in _every six hours,_ ” Ryan says. “If you don’t, it means you’ve probably depleted your oxygen reserves, and we’ll need to come after you. Got it?”

“Yes, _mum._ ”

“I mean it.”

“Don’t worry, Rye-bread. I’ll be back before you know it.”

_Rye-bread. What the—_

“Bring me back something cool!” Jeremy shouts.

“For you, Lil J, anything.”

And he’s off. Just like that.

While he’s gone _physically,_ he makes sure his presence is never forgotten.

Ryan spends most of the day in the lab working through notes and observations he’s collected over the past few weeks that have been piling up. He keeps his comms open to hear the ensigns chatter away, but as Gavin is on his own, he entertains them all by _singing_ and asking his trademark questions.

“Ryan, million credits but every time you sneeze you teleport.”

“Uh, sure. Why not.”

“Just like that?”

“Yeah. I mean, do you know how awesome that would be? No more space travel. You just get to _go_ whenever you want.”

“Yeah, but it’d be pretty unexpected,” Jeremy chimes in. “I mean, sometimes you just don’t know when a sneeze is coming, you know?”

“Yeah, like what if you sneezed during the middle of sex?” Michael says. “You’d just pop to a different place totally naked.”

“Not if you learned how to control your sneezes,” Ryan says.

Gavin laughs across the comms. “Control your sneezes.”

Ryan suddenly feels defensive about it, but where he would usually feel slightly offended, he’s filled with a sense of warmth and belonging. “What?”

And it goes on like that for as long as Gavin walks. From Gavin starting to sing with the ensigns joining in periodically (and Ryan occasionally humming under his breath), to the odd questions that gets everyone riled up and laughing, it’s a good first day without Gavin.

Gavin took with him a datapad so he can transmit his image to the base and they can have face-to-face conversations. It makes the longing lessen somehow, make something loosen a bit inside Ryan’s chest.

(He remembers a time when he was sent down to another desolate world. The desperation of his crew depending on him to find a solution to fix the problem—)

He shakes his head.

_This isn’t like the last time. Put it out of your mind._

(He wishes he could believe that.)

 

They settle down for the night, but not easily so. This is the first time they’re sleeping with someone away. The Hole Incident doesn’t count because at least they were in pairs and that Jeremy  wasn’t far from the base. Gavin is out by himself far from home. It’s a little disconcerting.

Jeremy stays in Michael’s room that night. No one says anything about it, and it’s played off as the repercussions of  late night gaming session, but Ryan understands. He does. Michael needs the presence of another in Gavin’s absence. Ryan understands. He _gets it._

(So then why does it make it harder for him to sleep that night? Jeremy and Michael _are right there across the hall._ Why is he so jumpy and uncomfortable all of the sudden?)

That night he dreams of a mad man and eyes full of desperation. He’s standing before a crowd, like that of a council condemning him. They sit in the stands all around him, looking down at him with expressions full of hate and fear and an odd sense of detachment.

“For your crimes, you will be sentenced.”

Ryan whirls around to try and face the speaker, but he can’t tell who it is. The people just all sort of blur together. “Wait,” he says.

“On the charges of defecting and abandoning your crew, you will be stripped of your rank and exiled.”

“No, no, you-you don’t underst-stand.”

“We do not take kindly to crimes of mutiny.”

“That’s-that’s not what happened.”

“How does the council find the criminal Commander Haywood?”

The people speak as one his dream, a cacophony of voices that is nearly deafening.

“Guilty. _Guilty. Guilty. Guilty!”_

The accusations get louder and louder and they grow around him until he is nothing but a small figure of a man before them.

 

He wakes with a gasp, covered in sweat and shivering. Jeremy is standing in the doorway.

“You okay, Ryan?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah,” he says, swinging his legs over the edge of his bed and sitting up. “Just stress dreams. Nothing to worry about.”

Jeremy doesn’t say anything immediately, but relents anyway. “Okay.”

Once Jeremy is gone back to the other room, Ryan gets up and strips out of his sweaty clothing to dress into clean ones. He won’t be sleeping tonight. Might as get some work done.

He goes to the lab, pulls out his notes, and gets to work.

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.6.23**

Upon Gavin’s return, the first thing he does is he immediately launches himself towards Ryan. Ryan is forced to extend his arms and catch him before the force of the jump sends him stumbling back and falling to the ground.

Gavin lands hard on his diaphragm, and he’s left gasping and coughing as Gavin continues to cling to him.

“Let me get a good look at that lovely mug, Rye!” Gavin peers down at him and grins. “Lovely! You’re lovely, Ryan. Do you know that?”

“Get off.” He pushes Gavin off so he can get a breath of air for once. “Good trip?”

“Wonderful trip! I should show you what I found.”

“Eyyyy, Gavvy’s back!” Michael and Jeremy come onto the scene and join them in their reunion.

Ryan moves them into the base where they can all take a break and catch up. Gavin did return with gifts for them all. A glowing rock for Jeremy—it becomes God Jr.—a rather large hunk of metal for Michael that he takes to add to his in progress dune buggy. And then an odd plant Gavin transplanted into a containment unit for Ryan.

The plant is like any flower, he supposes. The leaves are delicately shaped, and the entire thing glows and pulses white light, most noticeably where the flower is. And as with most things on this planet where everything kind of floats oddly, particles of what he can only assume to be pollen float and sparkly around the head of the flower.

Words escape him. “Gavin, I . . .”

Gavin laughs. “The look on your face! “

“Thanks, Gavin,” Jeremy says. “Did you at least have a good time out there?”

“You wouldn’t _believe_ the things I found out there. I don’t know if the structures I found were created by natural forces or not, but it was just so much fun  than just looking out and seeing flat fields and the occasional hill.”

He breaks off to post his photos to the screen in the common room. They all gather around and listen to explanations of the images and videos. For the rest of the day they relax, and everything just feels right again. Gavin is back, safe and sound. Michael can relax. Jeremy can stop hovering around them to make sure they’re all right, and Ryan can sleep again.

Now that the first solo expedition has gone smoothly, more will probably occur in the future but it’ll be with less worry.

(But that doesn’t mean the same dreams will return with the same feelings of isolation and worry that somehow something will go wrong and Ryan will end up _alone_ and the crew of _The Hunter’s Achievement_ will return and blame Ryan for what’s happened and it’ll be like _The King’s Vengeance_ all over again—)

_Enough. No more of this. That will never happen again and you know this. Enough._

_Enough._

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.7.26**

His dreams make themselves known every once in a while. It’s not bad, not like it used to be, but Ryan hates how little control he has over them. He can’t tell his brain to not have dreams like this, but he just wishes he could control how he reacts to them. He hates it when Jeremy wakes him with a gentle touch to his shoulder, brings him out of whatever sweat-inducing nightmare that has a hold over him.

He hates the look Jeremy gives him. He hates how he closes himself off from the ensign and puts his back to him.

He knows Jeremy is only trying to look out for him. He knows this. But it’s hard to respond in any other way than defensive when he’s left open and vulnerable like he is after one of his dreams. He doesn’t explain why they happen or what they’re about. The ensigns don’t ask. They give him sympathetic looks, and he tells them _he’s fine_ rather harshly before pulling away and retreating to his work space.

They know not to bother him when he’s in one of these moods.

(He wishes they would push, though. He wishes they would refuse to let him go off by himself and force him to tell them what’s wrong; how can we help; what can we do; are you okay. And he wishes he could just accept that in return instead of running like he always does.)

Whenever they’re bored, they begin to ask Ryan questions of his time in the academy and before landing a position on _The Hunter’s Achievement._ Ryan is responding better to these types of questions. Where he would’ve treated such invasive and personal questions with sarcasm and cold defiance, he now opens himself up to them and to the ensigns. They find him interesting and they want to get to know him, so he indulges them.

“I grew up on Corinthian,” he says, starting out simply. “Ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Nope.”

“I would be surprised if you did. It’s a real backwater. It’s mostly for agricultural purposes, exporting the food stuffs to neighbouring planets and starships. Everyone who lives on the planet is destined to take up the family farm and that’s about it. Not even Fleet recruiters come down because it’s that backwater. My education consisted of learning how to farm and that’s it.”

“How’d you make it out here then?” Jeremy asks.

“Stowed away on a grain carrier and kept going until someone caught up to me.”

“Never knew you were such a rebel, Ryan,” Michael says. “I always pegged you as a by-the-books type of person.”

“I was a terror as a child. Once the authorities caught up to me, they realized that I was smart so they sent me off to the academy.”

“How old were you?” asks Gavin.

“Sixteen. I landed my first position on a ship when I was eighteen.”

“What ship was it?”

“Um, _Retribution_ I think? They decommissioned it after two years.”

“Where did you go from there?”

“For a while I was planet side, doing some academic work before another position on another ship came to my attention.” Before they can ask what ship, he changes the subject? “But what about you guys? Where are you from?”

So they talk about their home planets. Jeremy’s city planet of Umbia. Michael’s mountainous one of Walden. And Gavin’s water based one of Budae. They are all located in the same star system, hence the reason why they all ended up in the same Fleet academy to become astroneers. While they all came from different disciplines, they all had the same basic courses. They all graduated at the same time and were all assigned to the same ship a little less than a year ago.

(Ryan breathes a sigh of relief once the conversation is no longer on him.)

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.8.14**

“Hey, Ryan, where’d you go?” Gavin asks.

It’s nighttime. 21:25. The stars are out, and Ryan has taken the time to get on top of the base so he can lie on his back and chart the stars properly.

“On top of the base,” he says.

“What are you doing up there?”

“Star gazing.”

“Oh, that’s lovely.”

Charting stars is probably one of his favourite pastimes. Each planet has their own stars and their own constellations. Their own myths and stories behind each one that is culturally significant to the people of the planet. That’s what Ryan loves about them. There’s a wonder and a mystery to them that calls out to people. And when that calling is great enough, the people come together to send each other out to the stars to greet them. It’s what he always dreamed about as a child. The wheat fields of Corinthian wouldn’t be able to follow him out there, and he made that dream a reality.

It’s quiet for a while before someone else joins him on the top of the base. It’s Jeremy. He flops gracelessly down by Ryan and grins at him. Ryan smiles back.

“Hello.”

“Hi! Thought you might be lonely out here.”

Ryan is touched by the sentiment and turns back to his work.

Gavin and Michael also come out of the base, but they don’t climb up as Jeremy has. Instead, they play some sort of game with a synthetic oxygen pouch that Ryan mocked up in the lab to understand the basic properties of what holds the oxygen on this planet. They kick it and bat it around like a ball and try to do all sorts of things with it. Jeremy laughs at them from his perch, and Ryan simply smiles.

Eventually, Jeremy goes down to fool around with them, and Ryan puts away his gear to watch them from above. Once they’ve tired themselves out, they join Ryan on top of the base.

“I think we could make a pretty sweet observation room,” Michael says as he leans back on his arms. “Get like some glass panels going and build a transparent room so we wouldn’t have to put our suits on if we just want to look outside.”

“I think that’d be pretty cool,” Ryan says. “How are you going to make the glass?”

“Just get some sand and melt it down.”

“Where are you going to get the sand?”

“Gavin’s got me covered, don’t you, boi?” He slaps a hand down on Gavin’s leg and Gavin smiles.

“Sure do, boi.”

(It’s a peaceful night when Ryan finally falls asleep.)

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.9.28**

For the most part, Ryan is able to casually subvert any conversation about his past away from himself. It works for the most part. He gives him enough so they don’t push, but he knows that one day he’s going to let his guard drop and a name will come out and that’ll be that. They’ll hound and they’ll demand and he’ll have to give them something, because now he can’t keep up the cold façade up any longer. He doesn’t want to be who he used to be.

“Have you ever been on any expeditions previously, Ryan?” asks Gavin because it always starts with Gavin. He’s too curious for his own good.

“Yeah. I’ve been on a few.”

“What were they like?” Jeremy asks.

“Not like this.”

Michael laughs. “Seriously, though. What did you do?”

“Well, there was one where I had to go down on a solo mission to this tundra planet once.”

“All by yourself?” Jeremy says. “Really?”

“Yeah. It sucked.”

“I’ll say. How long were you down there?”

“Well, originally it was supposed to be for two weeks. But there were . . .” he sighs, “complications.”

“What kind of complications?” Gavin asks.

“The ship I was on was having some troubles, so I was left down there for another three months.”

“Damn,” is all that Jeremy says.

“Yeah.”

He waits for them to ask further. They’re all in the base. Ryan is at the table with his work as the ensigns play games. He glances at them, waiting for the one question to come up.

_Don’t ask any more questions._

(No, ask me. Let me get this off my chest. Don’t leave me with myself.)

 “What ship was it?”

_Here we go._

“ _The King’s Vengeance._ ”

They all have a different reaction. Jeremy, trepidation and concern. Gavin, shock. Michael, wary confusion.

Ryan knows all about the reputation of his former ship. The disaster happened eight years ago, but the discovery of the ship and the horror within shot it into infamy.

 _The King’s Vengeance_ was, once upon a time, an expedition and exploration class ship that was meant to push the Fleet into a new age of astroneering. It was large and could travel for months at a time without having to stop at nearby space ports for warp core maintenance. It could house a crew of two hundred and fifty comfortably. It was state of the art, and the first crew chosen to pilot it reflected its status.

Ryan was in his early twenties at the time. Young in his own right and unexperienced in comparison to the others. He was flattered in being chosen—not just chosen, though. Specifically asked to join.

“So you’re the . . . _shit,_ ” Gavin mutters.

The ensigns are quiet. Seems like they’re familiar with the reputation of _The King’s Vengeance_ as well and what that means with Ryan sitting in their presence.

He puts down his datapad and crosses his arms on the table top.

“What happened?” Gavin asks.

 _“Gavin,”_ Michael says, exasperated.

“What?”

“Learn some fucking boundaries.”

“No,” Ryan says. He refuses to look at them though. “It’s all right. What do you want to know?”

“Well, how did you make it?” Gavin asks. “We all know the story. Just, what happened?”

They want the personal history, the un-redacted parts to the tale of one of the worst disasters in Fleet history.

So he tells them. He’s surprised by his own willingness to share his story with them. He’s only ever told one person what happened and that was Geoff. Back when he refused to set foot on another starship after what happened with _The King’s Vengeance_ and Geoff was basically courting him because he needed a scientist like Ryan on board. They had drinks and Ryan’s since sworn alcohol off since that night because he got piss-ass drunk and blurted his story to Geoff for whatever reason and Geoff promised it wouldn’t be like that. It was now mandatory to send down probes to planet surfaces before expedition forces could be send down. Ryan accepted the position, and now here he is, doing the one thing he swore he would never do again.

So he tells them about the first few months aboard the ship. Everything was going smoothly, he says. They were on the first leg of a five year journey, pushing the boundaries of known and explored space. They sent down expedition crews to every new planet they happened upon, and it was exciting at first.

But then it began to change. After coming across a frozen planet, the expedition returns with some odd artifacts. Ryan was part of the task force that was first exposed to the entity. The object was cylindrical in shape, rock based and intricately carved. It was also _ancient._ The carbon dating analysis said it was over two thousand years old. It was also comprised of two parts. With a simple twist, the base and top came apart. There was nothing inside but ash, but it proved to be their largest mistake.

Those first exposed to whatever was inside the artifact began to exhibit strange behaviours. The first was paranoia. The second aggression, followed by a massive heart attack and instantaneous death. But the process was so gradual that no one knew anything was wrong until it was too late. And it oddly affected everyone _but_ Ryan.

They left the planet behind to go onto the next, but the infection—or _whatever_  it was—spread until most of the crew was left paranoid and prone to fits of rage. The worst of all happened to Captain Edgar Moss. Captain Moss became increasingly erratic and cruel. He demanded things out of people that were bizarre and also dangerous, as if he were testing his crew’s loyalty. And to those who opposed would find themselves being ejected out through an airlock.

Due to their position in space, their comms with other ships and bases in the star system were useless. No one could hear them.

All Ryan could do was keep his head down and work, staying out of the way of Moss’s wrath until he was the last one left of the crew who’d been originally exposed to the artifact. Once this knowledge was discovered, Moss ordered the ship be brought back to the frozen planet.

Fearing for his own life, he did whatever Moss asked him to. He was sent down to the planet alone with only the basic necessities for a short time expedition. Two weeks he was promised. You have two weeks to find a cure for this. If you don’t, we leave you behind.

He was sent down to the original expedition site and went to work, out of his own sense to protect himself but also the others. He was the only one not affected by the sudden sweep of paranoia, so it was his duty to fix it all.

Two weeks passed. There was no word from _The King’s Vengeance._ Ryan had done all he could. He collected samples. He translated the inscriptions left on the walls. He concocted, he built, he experimented—

(He raged, he screamed, he tore his hair out, he pressed himself into small spaces to hide, he read the horrible stories left on the walls of caves, of no hope, of the people tearing themselves apart, of the gods abandoning them, of evil being unleashed, and now Ryan was feeling the paranoia, too. Maybe not in the same way the crew was, but in a sense that they had abandoned him here as a means of punishment.)

He doesn’t tell them this, though. There are some things he would like to keep to himself.

He rationed his food. He used his replicator for only when necessary. For three months he wasted away on that planet, on that frozen deathtrap. He nearly lost a hand to frostbite.

He did lose a few toes to it, though, and the sudden fascination in his missing toes breaks up the dreary atmosphere as the ensigns want to see it. He obliges and pulls off his shoe and sock, showing off his right foot with its three missing toes.

(He doesn’t tell them how he had to break them off by himself and cauterize the wound. Some things are better left unsaid.)

He continues.

He was collected by the ship and taken back up only to soon discover that the crew had devolved into petty warring factions. Half of the crew was dead by then, the infection spreading and killing them all. They suddenly didn’t care about a cure or anything. They had this bizarre mentality that Ryan was some sort of saviour. One faction worshiped the idea of him. Another had a cannibalistic mindset—he avoided those people, that goes without saying. But Moss, he had a different idea. He got to Ryan first. He locked him up in his quarters for _safety,_ which at the time Ryan appreciated. But then it got even more bizarre.

Moss thought that the secret to everything was in Ryan’s blood. He reverted to some form of vampiric mentality. In exchange for a small amount of his blood—to be ingested—Moss kept Ryan safe from the mobs.

This went on for the better part of a month, and Ryan did what he could to survive until it came to a crux when the rest of the crew had died out from either heart attacks or by each other’s actions. Moss came up to Ryan and said that they were all that was left.

 _“It’s just you and me,” he said quietly, crowding Ryan up against a wall. “And it is time for my ascension.” He held a knife in one hand, pressing it against Ryan’s neck. “To become a god. And you are all a part of this. With your blood and your sacrifice I will become more, more than just a_ human. _”_

_Ryan didn’t let him finish. He kneed him in the groin, wrenched the knife from his grasp and stabbed him first in the chest. He wrenched the knife free, and with a shout, pounced on Captain Moss._

He lost himself there. The fear and the constant adrenaline affecting him made him ruthless in his self-defence. He didn’t stop stabbing until Moss was utterly still. After which Ryan left the room in a stupor.

The ship was dark and too quiet for his tastes. He stepped over the corpses of his crewmates and stumbled back to his old quarters. He lay down on his bed and mentally checked out.

He doesn’t know how long he remained there, but eventually _The King’s Vengeance_ was found floating adrift by another ship. Ships had been sent out to look for _The King’s Vengeance_ as they hadn’t made any communications in months. Upon being found, it was boarded.

A light drifted over Ryan’s body, and he looked at the masked strangers with an odd sense of detachment. They carried him out on a stretcher and placed him in a containment cell in a med bay. He was the only survivor due to a mutation in his blood that rendered him immune to the infection that killed all of his crewmates.

He was twenty-three at the time.

When he was in better spirits and could finally answer all the questions the Brass had for him, he made his demands known. He didn’t want anyone to know he was the sole survivor. He didn’t want his name appearing in anything. Partially due to the seed of doubt in his mind that maybe someone of his crew survived and was coming to hunt him down, but mostly due to the fact that he didn’t want this to be the first thing people thought of when they heard his name. The Brass acquiesced and granted him his decision to remain at an academy and do research for a few years until Geoff came knocking at his door.

He may not say all of this to the ensigns, but they get the summary. They now know that he’s the sole survivor of _The King’s Vengeance._ His mystery is solved.

He’s surprised by the hand on his shoulder. He looks up to see Jeremy.

“That’s rough, buddy,” he says, and Ryan _laughs._

He laughs because fuck if it doesn’t feel good to finally say it to someone. To not be afraid of it and say to his past that it doesn’t own him any longer. Something like that will never happen again.

He laughs until it hurts and wipes away the tears that have fallen. _Oh, that feels good._

“You gonna be okay, Rye?” Jeremy asks.

Ryan nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. You guys looking for a fourth player?”

“Of course we are!” Gavin says and makes room on the couch for him. “Get in here!”

They play games until their eyes hurt, and Ryan let’s himself be inhibited for the first time in months.

And who knew it would only take nine months of forced co-habitation with three eccentric ensigns to get him to open up.


	4. The Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate chapter! 
> 
> Thanks for all the support so far. I really appreciate it. Let me know what you think of this chapter in the comments!

**2655.10.12**

They don’t treat him differently after learning about his past, and for that he’s grateful. He’s not a piece of glass, he’s not broken, he’s come to terms with what’s happened, he’s dealt with the survivor’s guilt and all the rest of the emotional fall out that left him paranoid for months afterwards. He remembers when he told Geoff in the crowded bar just outside of the academy he worked at. The words came spilling out of him when Geoff asked why he decided to do research when he could do so much more aboard a ship. He blamed the alcohol, but by then he was so tired of living with the knowledge on his own that the words came out in a hurried rush. After which he set his head down on the table and felt Geoff’s hand on his shoulder.

“Hey,” he said, softer this time, urging Ryan to look him in the eyes. “That’s never going to happen again,” he said. “And I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel comfortable on board. You get to set the pace. You get to call the shots and whatever else you want to do.”

He lifted his head with some effort from the table. “Fine. What’s the name of the ship again?”

Three years after that night he finds himself here on Sorola-6 surrounded by three ensigns with very different and vibrant personalities that he feels like have given him a piece of himself back—something carefree and fun and _relaxed._ He doesn’t need to worry about them as much as he used to. They are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. It’s no longer Commander Haywood and the three ensigns. They are the crew of Expedition Wild West. They’re in this together.

Ryan makes a major breakthrough one day in breaking down the compounds of the fauna on this planet. Everything seems to have both oxygen and hydrogen pouches. The hydrogen pouches are the ones likely to explode near the end life of a plant’s cycle. The oxygen pouches are then left behind as by-products to collect and gather in places where fauna spawn.

He’s long suspected the reason for the hydrogen and oxygen pouches, but now he’s certain. There are no open bodies of water on Sorola-6, not that they’ve found. There is no evidence of dry river beds or lake beds, which Gavin finds odd. They’re beginning to suspect of sub-terrain lakes deep beneath the surface that everything has tapped into to live off of, a very extensive root network—Jeremy suggests all life is possible because of God the Giant Floating Rock at which point Ryan begins to think about it because how are the plants getting water on this barren rock of a planet?—but now he knows what he’s looking at.

The plants are synthesizing their own water from the oxygen and hydrogen pouches within themselves. Most plants—if not all—grow in a similar manner. They start with a bud. The bud then inflates with helium, giving the plant room to grow a seed inside. Within the bulbous helium pouch additional pouches of oxygen and hydrogen form to water the life within. It creates its own ecosystem within the helium pouch until its fit to burst and let the seed go where it will.

It’s amazing. It’s absolutely incredible, and Ryan is pleased by the concrete results he now has.

Jeremy steps into the lab to remind Ryan of dinner. “Freeze dried spaghetti or freeze dried chicken soup. Take your pick.”

“Jeremy!” he says, spinning in his seat. “Take a look at this!” He pulls Jeremy over to his work table where he’s designed a digital mapping of one of the plants with all its properties. “Self-sufficiency. That’s what these plants are able to do! See, the hydrogen and oxygen pouches form side by side. They’re able to synthesize their own water, which collects in the this space here which then feeds down the veins to the root system of the plant.”

Jeremy isn’t really looking at the image. He’s looking at Ryan with a faint look of admiration.

“You’re such a nerd,” he says fondly. “Glad you got your breakthrough, buddy. Now come on. Time to eat.” He slaps his hands down on Ryan’s shoulder and guides him away from the lab and into the common area.

He shares with Michael and Gavin what he discovered and the conclusion of the night is this: Sorola-6 is a weird fucking planet and Ryan is a huge fucking nerd.

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.10.19**

Michael has officially finished his dune buggy. It’s a two-seater unstable thing that will probably blow over with the slightest breeze. But for what he had to work with, it’s very impressive. That doesn’t mean you could pay Ryan to get in, but he sits on top of the base with Jeremy as Michael and Gavin take it for a spin.

They skid along the ground, make sharp turns, whoop and holler as Michael nearly flips it but then forces it onto its wheels at the last second. When Gavin has to pull off because he’s become too nauseous, Jeremy eagerly leaps down from the base and takes his spot. Gavin lays spread eagle on the ground.

“You all right there, Gav?” Ryan asks through the comms.

He receives a winded groan as a response and laughs. He’s fine.

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.11.23**

“Hey, Ryan,” Gavin says. “Do you think we could go on a little adventure?”

They’re on their second last month of the expedition. Things are starting to wrap up. Ryan has them mostly start the cataloguing process of everything they’ve discovered and made note of. It’s boring ‘paper work’ for the most part that keeps the ensigns confined to the base. But since they’re making good time, Ryan figures a trip out would do them some good.

“I don’t see why not,” he says. “Hey, Gav, why don’t you plan out an adventure and we’ll go on it.”

“Aw, sweet!”

Gavin plans ahead on what they can do. During his last few extended trips away from the base, he’s come across debris fields—old satellites for the most part but also ejected space pods. What he would like to do is to bring the rest of the crew with him to the closest satellite that he’s found and also the largest, he says. It’s a two hour leisurely walk from the base, and Ryan decides that it’s perfect. They’ll head out the next morning.

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.11.24**

They pack up their gear for a day long trip beyond the base. They head out early in the morning and are on their way soon after.

The first leg of the trip consists of the ensigns fooling around and messing with each other. Michael consistently sneaks up on Gavin when he’s least suspecting it. Gavin always shrieks when it happens and then they start chasing each other down.

Jeremy is always one to see something interesting and stop walking to get a closer look at it. Sometimes he’s so quiet about it that they don’t even notice he’s gone until they’re twenty paces away and have to urge him to come forward.

Other than that, they pass the time by asking Ryan questions of his time in the Fleet. Where he’s been, what’s he done, what he’s seen. They don’t ask him any questions about _The King’s Vengeance_ and for that he’s grateful. Maybe one day it won’t feel so bad to talk about it, that he’ll be even more removed from it and it won’t affect him so much. But for now, he’s content in talking about his other adventures abroad.

“We took leave on Krakoa,” he says. “It’s this, like, volcanic world. _Really_ well known for their metal craft, but anyway, I was with Geoff for the first while and he was _really_  into this one metal smith. Like, it was basically love at first sight. And it was part of the Sapien Coalition, so it wasn’t like he was going to have any physical difficulties with her—you know?—but there was a _lot_ of cultural miscommunications.”

“Oh no,” Jeremy mutters. They’re all smiling because they all know Geoff and Geoff is the one who usually ends up in the most trouble while on leave.

“So, they hang out a lot and set me up a few times and they’re just totally and madly in love with each other. So near the end of our leave, he takes her up to the ship and shows her around, but what we didn’t know was that if you invite someone into your house—which the ship basically was—that’s basically asking them to marry you.”

“Oh, shit,” Michael laughs.

Ryan nods because now they all know where this is going. “So when they come back planet side, her whole village celebrates the recent news, and Geoff is so confused at this point because he doesn’t know what’s going on, but I figure it out from what’s going on and tell him. And he goes absolutely _white._ Like I’ve never seen him so pale before. And everyone this woman knows starts planning the wedding and congratulating him, and he’s just going along with it because he doesn’t want to offend anyone, and I’m just sitting on the sidelines laughing at him. And he asks me to help him explain it because he doesn’t want to hurt her. So being the nice guy that I am, I go up to her and I explain to her the situation. And she says ‘oh, thank gods because I wasn’t ready for marriage either.’”

“Who was it?” Gavin asks.

“It was Griffon.”

“Shit, no fucking way,” Michael says.

“Yep. I mean, he still offered her a position on the ship because her skills are amazing, but he nearly married her without even knowing it.”

They laugh and Michael says, “What I would’ve given to see his face when he learned that.”

“It was probably the most memorable ship leave of all time.”

He tells them a few more stories of his shore leaves and other misadventures with Geoff. The ensigns regale him with stories of their time in the academy and on their home planets. How Gavin grew up on the coast and was nearly eaten by a sea dragon when he went scuba-diving with a friend.

“What you have to realize is that since the planet is nearly covered in water that everything grows really large,” he says. “So this sea-dragon—I don’t even remember what it was—comes up behind me and just nudges me a bit with its nose and I swear it was going to eat me and my friend Dan was just laughing at me and I swear the entire experience took ten years off my life.”

Ryan can imagine him quite well on Budae, all tanned skin and sun-bleached hair. It makes a nice mental image.

Michael grew up with mountain climbing and a lack of parental supervision.

“I could basically go wherever I wanted,” he says. “There wasn’t any place that you wouldn’t be allowed to go. You just had to watch out for avalanches and shit.”

As for Jeremy’s stacked city planet of Umbia, there wasn’t much for him to do, but the night life on Umbia was insane.

“Can you imagine going to a three day rave?” he asks.

Ryan blinks. “Have you?”

Jeremy nods. “Craziest time of my life. Everyone on Umbia is nuts, man. I’m surprised I even made if off world to the academy.”

Ryan wishes he could go to each of their home worlds and experience life the way they did. He’s sure they’d have things to show him, wonders that they hold dear even if they wanted to leave for a reason. Maybe on their next extended leave they could all go, all four of them onto a new adventure.

They’re nearing the end of their journey when Gavin dashes off one last time. Michael follows him willingly as he always does, out of concern and interest as to what grabbed his attention so suddenly.

 “Was he always like this?” Ryan asks.

“Like what? So flighty?” Jeremy says.

“Yeah.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised he made it through the academy. He didn’t even show up to half his classes. He’s always got something else on his mind.”

“Yeah. That’s the first thing I learned about him. Come on. Let’s just keep going. Michael’ll get him back here.”

Jeremy nods, and they continue down the tether line. Eventually Michael and Gavin do come back, and when they do, Gavin has something held in his cupped hands.

“Look at this, Ryan,” he says, in the soft, awe-filled tone.

“ _Oh my gods!”_ Jeremy says in the same tone.

Ryan looks down and ‘hmms.’ “Neat,” he says.

What Gavin has found is some type of animal. It reminds Ryan of a salamander, but is bloated and seems to be hovering just a few inches above Gavin’s palms.

“It’s probably got some sort of helium bladder,” Ryan says. “That would explain how it could float.” Suddenly, the creature deflates and hisses at Gavin before crawling along his arm and down his leg. Gavin predictably shrieks and jumps, trying to shake the creature off as it scampers along the stony ground. A few feet away it re-inflates and begins to float away.

Michael laughs. “What did you think it was going to do to you? Float in your face or something?”

“It could’ve spat poison at me, Michael. Besides, I was hardly expecting it to go all creepy-crawly over me.”

“All right, fun’s over. Back in front, Gavin,” Ryan says, pointing him to the tether. “I don’t want to be stuck out here at night.”

“Right. Let’s get to it then, boys!”

They get back on track and start talking about the creature that Gavin found. There’s been very little wildlife other than the plants that they’ve encountered. It might mean that they’re on a part of the planet that is uninhabitable to this planet’s lifeforms, or they’re all helium based and are floating above them. As terrifying as that might seem, it means they’ve only scratched the surface of this planet. There’s still so much to do yet and they’ve only got two months left before _The Hunter’s Achievement_ comes to pick them up.

Two months, Ryan reminisces. So much has changed since they first landed. He wonders what Geoff would say at seeing him like this.

_“Of ALL the people on the ship to break through your whole cold, mad scientist routine, it’s the three idiots who would probably trip over their own shoelaces.”_

True, they are still a bit new to this whole astroneer lifestyle, but they’ve come leaps and bounds. They’re still wide-eyed at the thought of the boundlessness of space, and that’s something Ryan wishes he still had. Before _The King’s Vengeance_ made him fear his lifestyle, what forced him into the lab because if he leaves the ship, there’s a chance it won’t come back to him. He misses the fieldwork, and maybe he did need to be shoved out of it forcibly. He’s just glad that the boys managed to shake him out of his cold revelry. It’s not the same as it once was, but change isn’t a bad thing. A little caution never hurt anybody.

“Satellite at twelve o’clock!” Gavin shouts.

They hustle up a small incline and come face to face with a rather large satellite. It’s sunken and half buried into the ground with one solar wing extending into the sky.

“Gods damn, dude,” Jeremy mutters.

“I know right?” Gavin says. “How could we ever miss something this big? I mean, it’s bloody huge.”

“And old, too. I mean, who builds shit like that anymore?” Michael says.

“Come on,” Ryan says, trudging down the hill. “Let’s get a closer look at it then. If there’s anything interesting here, we’ll take a closer look at it tomorrow.”

They scramble down the hill and set up tethers around the satellite to explore it fully.

It’s definitely something to behold. The metal of the structure still visible from where it sits in the ground has been pockmarked away by wind and debris, but it’s still got its hull integrity. It doesn’t appear to be something a human would live in, but they don’t even know if it’s something made by _homo sapiens._ It could be some other alien-made craft, and this is what Gavin confirms.

“Humans like things shaped in squares and rectangles,” he says. “The solar panels are made up of hexagons, so it isn’t human made. Neat, isn’t it?”

The solar wing is nearly twenty feet long and five feet across. There’s scattered bits of debris all around the thing, and Ryan can only imagine what’s been buried beneath them.

“How long do you think this thing has been here?” Jeremy asks.

“I’d say a good couple of years,” Gavin says as he currently tries to climb up on top of the main hull of the satellite onto the wing.

“Gavin,” Michael hisses in warning.

“What?”

“Check for inscriptions,” Ryan says. “Maybe we can find out who this satellite belongs to.”

They scrounge around for a considerable amount of time but find nothing conclusive. Michael wants to use the excavs, but Gavin throws a fit.

“You can’t just smash your way through a find like this,” he says.

“Says the guy climbing all over the damn thing.”

Gavin ignores this and presses on. “There’s proper protocol for stuff like this. First we survey it and mark everything down. And after everything has been cleared away from the surface, we start digging down and finding a safe way in.”

“I’m not sure we can handle something like that with just the four of us,” Ryan says. “I’ll put in a request for when Geoff comes back.”

“Aww, Ryan. Why, Ryan? We finally get to do something I’m trained in, and you shut me down.”

“ _I’m_ the one following proper proti-protocol here. Compared to you, just climbing all over the damn thing.”

Gavin laughs at his stutter and daintily jumps down from where he was perched on the solar wing.

“You good, Gav?” Jeremy asks.

“Yeah. I’m fine. I took all the notes I wanted to beforehand. What do you think, Ryan?”

“I think it’s great. I can’t wait to see what information we can get out of it. Hey, Michael. Maybe you can dune buggy up here and crack it open.”

“Sure thing, Ryan.”

They spend some more time exploring the debris field surrounding the satellite when Jeremy is knocked off his feet by a sudden gust of wind. It’s a strong force that causes even Ryan to stumble back to balance himself. Considering the reasonable climate this planet has afforded them over the past ten months this sudden burst of wind has Ryan worried.

This isn’t good.

“Hey, Ryan,” Michael says, pointing to the east of their position. “I think we got trouble coming.” Michael pulls from his pack a pair of binoculars. “Looks like a massive dust storm.” He holds out the binoculars for Ryan to confirm. The billowing clouds rolling towards them forces him into action.

“We need to move,” he says. “Get on the tethers and secure yourselves. We need to move.”

They leave the satellite and begin to follow the tether line for the long trek back with Michael leading the way and Ryan trailing at the back. He keeps looking over his shoulder, tracking the storm as it barrels towards them. He swallows hard.

The wind steadily picks up, but it’s at their backs so it forces them along a big quicker even if it causes Ryan to stumble against Jeremy from time to time. They run in stretches of five minutes before walking for one minute in between. They’re making good time, but Ryan’s afraid it won’t be enough.

The wind gets harder and soon the edge of the storm is upon them. Their visibility begins to decrease rapidly. Michael says that his nav equipment is glitching out, but he’s sure they aren’t that far yet. Another forty minutes perhaps.

_We don’t have forty minutes._

“Hold up,” he says. “Everyone, pull out your tethers and connect yourself to the person behind you. I don’t want us to get lost.”

“Good thinking,” Gavin says.

They take the time to stop and tether themselves. Jeremy is reaching back to hand his tether off to Ryan when Ryan hears it. It’s a large piece of debris, a metal plate flipping end over end. He freezes, doesn’t hear Jeremy’s shout before he braces and raises his arms to deflect. The debris smashes into him dead on and yanks him from the line. He doesn’t know how far he’s carried, but he lands hard and hits his head even harder.

When he comes to, it’s to blazing light and a soft breeze. His HUD is static and his comms unit is dead. He finds himself largely immobile. He’s in some sort of hole, buried beneath sand and dirt that the wind has carried in. He shifts a little until pain shoots up both his legs. He collapses and breathes hard through his nose. It would be his luck to have both legs broken.

He looks up at the edge of the hole. Even if his legs weren’t broken, there would be no way he could climb out on his own.

And that familiar feeling of dread comes crawling back to squeeze his stomach into knots.

He’s going to die here.


	5. The Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Totally meant to do this last night but I fell asleep. oops. I hope the length makes up for it!
> 
> Thanks for all of you who have commented and kudoed. It means a lot to me especially on my debut fic into this fandom. I've got a lot more planned, so this isn't the last you've heard of me.

**Stardate 2655.11.23**

On Corinthian, children weren’t raised by their parents but by the town’s local commune. It was a societal thing, to raise their children the same with a socialist mindset to prevent favouritism and from those establishing a royal lineage to dominate over others. Ryan didn’t really have brothers or sisters in the normal sense, or any other sense really. He was raised in a group of twenty other children, raised in an identical manner. He learned the same things they did. He did chores the same way they did. He knew at sixteen he would receive his first work placement at one of the mega-farms surrounding the city. At eighteen he would be slotted into an agricultural faction ranging from dairy to poultry to pork to beef or maybe it would be simply field work. Day in, day out, until he could retire from the farm life and take up teaching and continue the cycle. But when he was five, he knew with every fibre of his being that his feet would not stay planted on Corinthian for long.

He raised his hand one day in class when the teachers taught them about the work force. “What about the stars?” he asked.

“What about them?”

“Can’t we go out to them?” He’d seen the carriers shuttle off into the atmosphere with the excess grain and foodstuffs. He knew his people supplied many other ships and planets with food, so why wasn’t that an option up on the board?

“We don’t talk about the stars,” the teachers said harshly and firmly. “Our place— _your_ place is here on your home planet. It is your duty to take up the work as others have done.”

He later learned that his planet and its people had a stigma against those that left Corinthian for a life amongst the stars. It was an insult to their ancestors and it was a waste of a life. Were they even aware of what could happen to them up there? Here, here on Corinthian it was safe. They already knew of all the present dangers, but space was unknown. Those that turned to the stars were outcasts, excommunicated and forgotten.

That never stopped him, though. He would ask again and be sent off to the headmaster’s office to receive a switch on the back of both hands, and later, when he was older, on the backs of his legs for his nonsense questions. He would feign repentance only to steal away after curfew to look at all those millions of stars from inside the nearest cornfield. There he would lie back and try to count them—impossible.

He found the shapes above him, the stories his people associated with the stars. The Scythe, Kinoa the Harvester, Rax the Shepherd, and Rona the Pioneer. He liked Rona the best, with her hand outstretched, leading the people to greener pastures, as it were. But to Ryan, she pointed to the stars.

 _You don’t belong here,_ she would say to him. _These stars are yours. Go out and meet them._

When he was thirteen, he had a plan. The carriers left the surface early in the morning, just before dawn. He gathered his belongings and some rations in a bag and left hours before anyone would wake. He made it to the loading docks and seized the opportunity to sneak onto a carrier. He hid himself amongst the crates and waited in a cramped position until the carrier took off. He crawled up to the nearest viewing port once it happened and watched the green and golden fields of Corinthian shrink away. He vowed he would never return. So far he’s kept that promise.

He managed to keep his presence quiet on the carrier as it was docked with a larger transport ship. From there he was taken to the planet of Malfi. It was a lush, tropical place, the vibrant colours popping from every corner. He spent three weeks on the streets there, but it was a tolerable planet to live on. The Malfians were a courteous people to those that weren’t their own. They were hospitable and treated Ryan with kindness even though they didn’t know him. When he’d taken in his fill, he stowed away on another ship, this time a passenger ship.

From planet to planet he travelled. He grew and picked up work where he could to sustain himself when the going got rough. It wasn’t all easy going, though. He’d look at or speak to the wrong person and find himself with a black eye in some back alley, credits missing and clothes torn. He’d find himself on the wrong planet and realize it was inhospitable to _homo sapiens._ Or he’d come into contact with an ancient alien race that saw _homo sapiens_ as nothing more than adorable pets, something humorous and well receiving to patronizing pats on the head.

He did all right for himself until he stowed away on the wrong ship. He should’ve put more research into the ship before getting on, but didn’t. He found a neat little nook just off of engineering and set up camp. It was an electrical fire that forced him to flee and into the hands of some heavily armed uniformed personnel.

“Looks like we’ve got a stowaway on our hands,” one guard said. “Take him to the captain.”

He didn’t bother struggling when they grabbed his arms. There was no point.

They took him to the captain in the wheel house. There he learned the true purpose of the ship. Beyond the observation glass he could make out dozens and dozens of cells. It was a prison carrier. He snuck a glance at the navigation controls. They were 2,347 standard clicks from a planet called Tarpeian. He’d never heard of it, but assumed it to be some sort of prison planet if that’s where this ship was headed.

He was introduced to Captain Marshall Haywood of the ship _Ironside._ She was tall and broad shouldered. The right side of her face was heavily scarred, and Ryan suspected that her right eye wasn’t as real as it seemed.

“Found a stowaway.”

He was shoved forward. He straightened his spine when Haywood turned to face him. He would not be cowed now, not after all he had been through.

“A stowaway.” There was a pleased slant to the set of Haywood’s mouth. “I’m surprised none of our scanners picked you up. How long have you been hiding here, boy?”

“Three days.”

“Since our last fueling then. And how exactly did you avoid our scanners?”

“You didn’t put scanners in your maintenance vents. You know, for a prison carrier I expected a little more security.”

Haywood grinned. “Smart kid. What’s your name?”

“Ryan.”

“Anything else to that, Ryan?”

“No. Just Ryan.”

“Well, Ryan, do you know how stowaways are punished?”

“Really, there is no definite punishment to stowaways,” he replied calmly. “The definition of ‘stowaway’ is sometimes loosely understood as someone who gained illegal passage upon a ship, but for whatever reason is determined by the stowaway, so they could claim themselves to be a refugee, a greenhorn who set foot on the wrong ship, or an asylum seeker. Based on the reason why they are stowing away, different charges will apply. And if you’re referring to the archaic practice of ejecting someone out an airlock for stowing away, I think you’ll have to refer to Article 12 on the Charter of Safe Space Travel for All Sentient Life Forms.”

Hawywood began chuckling before throwing her head back in a full laugh. “My, you’ve got some mouth on you, kid. Officer Bitkins, put Just Ryan here to work. I think he could make himself quite useful until we dock up again with a more civil planet.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He worked for the crew of _Ironside_ for two weeks more after that. He was mostly stuck on cleaning detail, but Haywood took a special interest in him. She invited him to take his meals with her. When he wasn’t needed to work, she invited him up to the wheel house and asked him all manner of questions, all seemingly random, but she just wanted to see how he worked out a problem to provide her with a feasible answer. Once they docked at the planet of Kyrtz after completing their round trip, Captain Haywood took Ryan to the planet’s largest Cosmic Fleet Academic Centre for Astroneering and Space Exploration. Entry age was a minimum of eighteen with exceptions to those who passed the entry level examinations or who’s grades impressed the right people.

She presented him before a council of the academy’s school board, dressed in the finest clothes he had ever worn.

“This is Ryan and I am his patron,” she said. “I am pushing for his acceptance and enrolment in the academy effective immediately. Or whenever the next school term begins. I haven’t looked at a calendar in quite some time.”

Effectively, what Haywood was giving him was a patronage, a right to claim her name as his own. She was responsible for him and would grant him support in any manner that he needed. It was a huge honour to be given a patronage, especially by a woman like Captain Marshall Haywood.

The school board took her claim seriously, and Ryan took his entry examinations. He passed with flying colours. Haywood smirked and muttered, “I knew it.”

He set foot in the academy when he was sixteen and graduated in two quick years, when most programs were four. Haywood was there at his graduation and saw him off on his first ship. She kept in close contact with him usually for academic purposes, making sure he knew to keep up on his school work and do her proud. Her name was on the line, not his. He did whatever he could to please her, make her proud of him.

When she heard about the disaster upon _The King’s Vengeance,_ she was his first visitor when he was allowed. She was stern and cold, keeping her face neutral when she learned of the facts. He was still raw and vulnerable, left shaken by what he’d seen and done. Sometimes he imagined his hands were still stained with Captain Moss’s blood.

In those days, he spent much of his time in bed, in a med centre for long term care. He wasn’t yet fit to be out in public.

“Are you ashamed of me?” he asked with his back to her where she sat next to his bed.

“Why would I be ashamed of you?”

“Because of what I’ve done. I’m a . . . I’m a monster.”

“That’s quite enough,” she said sternly, for she had never been a caring or soft spoken woman. He rolled around to face her, and for a moment she softened her stance. “We do what we need to do to survive. It’s the life we’ve chosen. I can’t tell you how to overcome this—that’s something you’ll have to do on your own—but you did what you _had_  to do.”

He risked the chance to look her in the eyes. She wondered what she thought of him then, curled up on that bed like a child, half the man he used to be. “I don’t know if I can go back up,” he said. “Would you be disappointed of me then?”

“You could do nothing to disappoint me, Ryan,” she said. “And you will prove me right again and again. This is just a setback.”

She died before he took up the position on _The Hunter’s Achievement._ He went to her funeral and was greeted by mourners, thinking him to be her son. In a way he was. He carried her name, after all. She received a memorial on the planet of Bucan, Termine, and Thrax, and a holiday on Servl. Her passing was felt throughout the Fleet and numerous coalitions they had with different planets and species. Her influence was great, but Ryan would remember her as the woman who gave him a chance, who saw something great in him from the moment she first met him. He saw Rona in her.

He was back out among the stars he loved for better or for worse. And as he lies in a pit on Sorola-6 with two broken legs, with his oxygen levels slowly depleting, one of his final thoughts as he stares up at the sky is _Let me see my stars._

He thinks of the ensigns first. He wonders how they’re doing, how his passing might affect them. It’s not uncommon for an expedition to lose a crew member. They are dealing with the unknowns for the most part, so every time someone is sent down to a planet, they could lose someone. Ryan is just another statistic in the end. His name will be added to some memorial of the souls lost in space. Geoff might get a tattoo of his name—the guy has some sort of weird guilt complex whenever they lost a crewmate, but Ryan’s not going to judge.

The ensigns, though. This will shake them. They’re new to the stars and their dangers. They won’t take well to his passing. They’ll mourn and they’ll grieve and the pain will seemingly never end. He knows the feeling well. He’s lost crewmates as well. He just hopes for their sakes that they’ll adjust, that they’ll be able to move on.

He never really had a grand picture for how his life would come to an end. In the beginning, it was simple: get off Corinthian. From there on, he improvised, a total free spirit until Haywood gave him a lending hand.

His oxygen warnings begin to blink. Once his oxygen is depleted, he’ll go to sleep. The buildup of carbon dioxide will put him to sleep slowly and calmly. It’s as gentle as he’ll get in this lifestyle.

The bright blue sky morphs into soft oranges and pinks before bleeding into purples and deep indigos. Once it goes black and the stars appear above him, Ryan sighs. His eyelids are growing heavy. His heart rate is slowing, and for a moment he thinks he can see his consolation of Rona the Pioneer.

_Rest now, weary traveller. For you have found your home._

But Haywood comes up behind her and laughs. _Not so fast, Ryan. I’ve got a lot more planned for you, and a mundane death isn’t one of them._

 _Funny,_ he thinks. _I didn’t think you’d die from a mundane heart attack._

Haywood laughs. _Smartass,_ she chides, and his eyes close as he smiles one last time.

* * *

“FOUND HIM!”

The shout is enough to jostle him from his sleep. Bright lights shine down on him. He has no strength to call up to whoever it is above him.

“GAVIN, GET THE TETHER!”

_Gods, that’s loud._

Someone jumps down into the hole with him and connects his suit to an oxygen tether. Soon there’s clean air he’s breathing, and once his head is clear, he can look to see who’s here with him. It’s Gavin. He kneels down beside Ryan and tilts his head up. He looks so worried. Ryan wishes he could assure him that everything’s fine, but he hasn’t enough air in his lungs to do so.

“Jeremy, get down here quick!” Gavin calls up. “You’re going to be okay, Rye. We’ve got you now.”

Jeremy climbs down into the hole and bioscans his body. “His heart rate is really slow right now. He’s got bruised and fractured ribs, a possible concussion, and two broken legs. We’ll have to strap him to the stretcher and lift him out. Michael, send down the stretcher.”

“You got it, Lil J.”

Jeremy kneels down beside Ryan and sets his hand against his helmet. “We got you, pal. Just hang on a little while longer.”

They dig him out first—carefully, of course—and lay him out on a stretcher. They strap him in tightly, and Michael heaves him out of the hole by brute force. Jeremy and Gavin are quick to join him on the surface. They carry Ryan and the stretcher to Michael’s dune buggy, having been properly structured and fitted to fit four of them comfortably and room for gear. They set him down on the back. Once in, they surround him and look down upon him.

His ensigns, his _boys_ are here. They found him. They came to him. They look haggard. They look exhausted, and the sight of them tugs at Ryan’s heart. He can feel the tears gathering and sliding down the sides of his face into his hairline. He wishes he could say something, _anything,_ but he has no words, no breath to spare.

“It’s okay, Ryan,” Jeremy says, in that soft and assuring bedside tone of his. “We’ve got you. You’re safe.”

Ryan blinks once, heavily, knowingly. _There’s so much I need to say to you and now I have the opportunity to do so._

“Let’s get you back, big guy,” Michael says, turning in his seat to turn on the dune buggy.

Gavin and Jeremy secure Ryan firmly and take their seats. It’s a bumpy ride back to the base, and Ryan’s body is urging him to sleep, but he resolutely keeps his eyes open to the stars above them as they pass. Once parked, they carry Ryan into the base and into the med bay, Jeremy’s domain. They take him out of his survival suit with ease. He’s surprised that his helmet didn’t crack from the blow or the fall.

He hisses and groans as his cracked ribs are shifted. Jeremy eases him down carefully and begins attaching him to a saline line as Michael and Gavin carefully take him out of his survival suit. They cut him out from the rest of his suit so they don’t jostle his broken legs. Jeremy slips an oxygen mask over his head and gives him a shot of valium, filling his veins with feathers.

“That feel better?” Jeremy asks.

Ryan nods. He lets one of his hands flop over the edge of the bed. _He feels amazing right now._

Gavin takes up his arm and lays it across his chest. He looks down at Ryan, looking a lot more relieved than he did a short while ago.

“Hey, Ryan.”

 _Hey, Gavin._ He blinks.

“You’re so fucking lucky you have us, Ryan,” Michael says. He always takes up that rage whenever one of them has been seriously hurt. It’s how he safely expresses his concern without coming off as vulnerable. Ryan wonders if it’s a custom thing from his planet, the rage to hide fear.

“You went fucking sailing, dude,” Gavin says.

“Bet you were carried a click away,” Michael adds.

Jeremy shoos them away from the bed so he can get to work. “Try to get some rest, Ryan. We’ll fill you in once you wake up.”

Ryan hums and closes his eyes. He’s carried off as the ensigns talk around him, providing him with the soothing and familiar tones of their banter.

_Time for round two, Ryan. You up for it, kid?_

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.11.24**

He wakes to the med bay shrouded in dim light. He flexes his right hand and lets is drift across his chest to his side. His hand comes into contact with the top of someone’s head. He pulls back first and looks down. Jeremy is slumped down on his bedside. Ryan returns his hand to the top of his head, carding his fingers through his hair gently. He rouses slowly, and Ryan lets his hand drop.

Jeremy blinks and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Hey, Ryan. You’re up.” He stretches and raises the light levels to the room. Ryan pulls off the oxygen mask.

“What time is it?” he asks.

“05:00 on the dot,” Jeremy replies. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a car. What’s the verdict then?”

“You’ve got three cracked ribs on your right side, you’ve fractured your right tibia and your left ankle. Other than that, you’re doing fairly well except for a bit of dehydration.”

Ryan groans.

“Yeah. You’re out of commission until the end I think, pal.”

“That’s fine. I’ve had enough of this planet to be honest.”

Jeremy laughs softly. “Same.” He takes on a more serious facial expression, and Ryan then sees how tired he is.

“Hey,” he says, reaching out blindly and Jeremy takes up his hand. “I’m fine. You found me.”

“I know but.” He sighs. “We almost didn’t. I mean, you were just _gone._ And we had no idea what to do and we couldn’t start looking for you with the storm. So we had to go back and wait it out and we didn’t know if you were alive or dead and we had no idea where you landed. We nearly lost you, Ryan.”

Ryan squeezes his hand. “It’s okay, Jeremy. You got me here now.”

Jeremy accepts the comfort and they remain in silence.

“Why don’t you go to bed for a few hours?” Ryan suggests. “You could use it.”

“You sure?”

He nods. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got my call bell here if I need you, see?”

“All right. How’s the pain?”

“Tolerable.”

“I’ll give you a little more to help you sleep, okay?”

Well, he won’t say no to that.

When he wakes a few hours later, the base is alive once more. He can hear all three ensigns chatting away fairly loudly in the common space. Now that he’s more awake, he can take in what’s happened to him since he was carried into the base. Jeremy has bound his ribs. His right leg is secured in a cast, same with his left ankle. He’s been dressed in a pair of cotton pants and left with a blanket pulled up to his chest. The med bay bed isn’t the softest and he’s too large for it, but it does the job.

His restless shifting draws the attention of the ensigns. They look well rested when they enter, dressed in simple fatigues all with mild cases of bedhead.

“Ryan’s up!” Gavin announces—he has a tendency to state the obvious, but Ryan doesn’t care.

The ensigns surround him, all looking relieved while he smiles softly. The pain is still present, but so long as there’s air in his lungs and the knowledge that the ensigns are all right, everything else doesn’t matter.

“Hey,” he says, clearing his throat. “What time is it?”

“09:30,” Michael says. “How are you feeling?”

Ryan shrugs. “Could be worse. How did you guys find me anyway?”

“Math and shit,” Michael says.

“We ran back to the base first and waited out the storm,” Gavin says. “But while we were doing that, we put a plan together as to where you landed.”

“Yeah, I figured you couldn’t have been carried far because the wind was strong but it wasn’t _that_ strong.”

“So after the storm let up, Michael got out the dune buggy and Jeremy packed up everything we would need and we went out.”

“We went back to the spot where we were in the storm and took off in the direction you were carried,” Jeremy says. “You ended up in Glory Hole Field.”

 _Glory Hole Field._ He really shouldn’t let Gavin name anything anymore.

Glory Hole Field is the lovely term given to a stretch of land that is pockmarked full of holes of varying depths and sizes. They have no idea how the holes formed, but it doesn’t matter in the long run. It took them hours to search each hole until they found the one Ryan was lying in.

“And then we got you back here,” Jeremy finishes. “And that’s that.”

“That’s that,” Ryan repeats. “I’m proud of you guys.”

“I was waiting for this to get gay,” Michael says.

Ryan laughs. “No, seriously. You guys did good work. You figured out how far I would’ve been carried and the area that I probably would’ve been in. You guys did really well, and I’m proud of you for that.”

The ensigns look bashful, except for Michael. He’s brought up his shoulder in a manner that says ‘yeah, don’t mention it.’

They stay in the base that day except for Michael, who has to go out and do maintenance checks on the solar panels and clear them of dirt. Ryan is left in the med bay. Jeremy raises the back of the bed so he can sit up at an angle. He’s given food to eat, and Jeremy digs up a wheelchair for him so he can haul himself in and out of bed to wheel around or go to the bathroom.

At the end of the day, Ryan is wheeled into the common space to play games. The four of them together set up for a long night and settle into the eased atmosphere now that all of them are together again.

He sleeps in his own bed that night, and after Jeremy gives him some softer painkillers, he falls asleep quite easily that night.

He sighs in contentment.

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.12.13**

Because of his condition, Ryan isn’t able to do anything outside. He’s to remain cooped up in the base until _The Hunter’s Achivement_ comes back into orbit to collect them.

It’s absolutely terrible being stuck inside all the time. He catches up on cataloguing and writing expedition reports, but once those are done, he really has no other work to occupy himself with. He does read a lot, though. His favourite spot in the base becomes the observation room that Michael constructed. It juts out of the common space with thick glass windows to  have a clear view of the area surrounding the base. From there he can watch the ensigns as they go on about their duties

What they’ve come to realize about Sorola-6 is that the planet enters a period of stormy activity, which happens to coincide with the end of their expedition. The dust storms are often violent, building without warning and bearing down on them fast. They don’t go beyond one click from the base during this time. They hunker down in the base as the storms pass, blowing debris and damaging their solar panels.

The dust storms often come with electrical charge, the clouds of it crackling with static electricity. It’s beautiful to behold in its danger, and Ryan enjoys watching them pass from the observation room. It’s of no harm to him when he’s inside the base, and now he can appreciate it for its beauty. But everyone knows that where’s lightning, there’s thunder.

The cracks of it are loud and have the ability to shake the base. The power flickers from time to time, and every time there’s a loud, ominous _boom_ Gavin makes a noise.

“ _Saints alive._ ” He puts his head down on the table and breathes in and out harshly.

Ryan looks over his shoulder, away from the window. “You all right there, Gavin?”

“Yeah, just, uh.” He rubs his forehead. “I’ve never been a fan of loud noises.”

“I think I’ve got some earplugs on my work station,” Ryan says and begins to wheel himself about back to the lab.

“I’ll get you.” He wheels Ryan into the lab, where Ryan pours over his desk to find an unopened back of earplugs.

“Catch,” he says, and tosses the pair to Gavin, who fumbles and then rights himself.

“Thanks. Hey, um, Ryan. I’m really glad Geoff assigned you to the expedition.” The way Gavin is holding himself, head down, eyes darting, slightly hunched, suggests he’s saying something personal. “You’re as brilliant as they say you are, and seeing you in the field . . . it’s incredible, you know. You’re incredible.”

Ryan doesn’t know how to respond to this. He’s never gotten so close to anyone in a very long time. Geoff just forced his way into his life and he just kind of tolerates him now, but with Gavin and Michael and Jeremy—it’s different. He opened up because he wanted to. The ensigns first respected him and then came to know him as a friend, accepted him into their social circle.

“Gavin, I . . .” he blinks because he has no words for this. “I, uh, j-just, uh.”

Gavin laughs. “You’re adorable, you know that?” He smiles brightly and squeezes Ryan’s hand. “And awkward as hell, gods, but no less endearing. Let’s get you back to your window.” He puts Ryan back in the observation room and heads back to the hallway. “Thanks for these.” He holds up the earplugs. “’preciate it.”

“No problem.” Ryan smiles, and so does Gavin, looking down and looking bashful.

(He has such a nice smile.)

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.12.15**

It’s a rare, clear day on Sorola-6, so the ensigns bound out to have some fun while they still can. Gavin has rigged up a camera to stand in for Ryan so he’s not left out of the festivities, as they put it.

They take out the dune buggy and take it for a spin around the flatter areas of the base. They take turns driving and learn that Gavin’s the worst, having nearly sent it into the God Hole three seconds after sitting behind the wheel. Ryan enjoys listening to their hollering as they launch over a hill. He likes being taken on the ride with them even though he can’t leave the base.

Eventually the boys get the bright idea to tow one of them around using a flat piece of metal as a sled and a tether line attached to the back of the dune buggy. Michael takes the ‘Ryan-Cam’ and heads out to the sled. Of course, he would be the one to try it out first.

“Ready for this, Ryan?” he asks as he settles himself down on the metal sled.

“I think the better question is are you ready?” Ryan says. “You’re the one who’s doing the thing.”

“It’s going to be great, I know.”

“Not what I said, but whatever.”

“STEP ON IT, LIL J!”

They start out on a slow pace. The camera shakes as Michael repositions himself on the sled. He gives a soft ‘whoa’ as Jeremy takes off slowly. Then Michael is urging him to go faster and faster and soon they’re hauling their way across the planet’s surface.

It’s a shaky ride for Ryan, but he finds himself laughing at the ensigns’ antics. They’re having so much fun, being so carefree and adventurous. Michael eases himself up onto his knees so he can throw his arms into the air. The Ryan-Cam is held aloft to show off the scenery. It shows Michael’s jubilant face as he yells and screams and laughs. He stumbles whenever Jeremy drives and has to crouch to steady himself, but he’s having fun, and Ryan is enjoying seeing the open and ecstatic look on his face. It makes him look softer and more inviting than his usual scowl and glare.

(Ryan suspects that scowls and glares are his default setting, but either way, seeing Michael so happy warms Ryan right down to the core.)

Jeremy makes a sudden turn, and Michael goes careening off to the side. “Oh, shit!” he says, bracing hard and yelling as he tries to hold on. But the turn is too much, and Michael and Ryan-Cam are tossed off. Ryan sits up, worried at first but then he hears Michael’s laugh. He’s just splayed out on the ground laughing as Jeremy brings the dune buggy around.

“You all right there, boi?” Gavin asks.

“That was fucking AWESOME,” Michael says and sits up. “Let’s go again. Gavin, get on it.”

“Sweet!”

Ryan-Cam is picked up and taken to the dune buggy.

“Nice and slow at first, Lil J,” Gavin says as he settles himself on the sled.

“Anything for you, pal.”

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.12.18**

Ryan is up late one night finishing up his star charts for Sorola-6. He’s fairly certain he’s got it all. They’re in the Cremlin System, so he’s familiar with most of the stars already from other planetary surveys. But here he can get to know them on a more familiar and stationary basis.

He’s sitting up in bed, scrolling over his datapad as he tries to identify some of the stars and clusters that he’s charted. He keeps the brightness setting on low because Jeremy is fast asleep. At least he is until he rolls onto his back, leans up on his arm, and blinks towards Ryan.

“Hey, Ryan,” he says quietly.

“Hey, Jeremy.”

“Can’t sleep?”

Ryan shrugs. “A little.”

“Is it the pain?”

“No, I’m fine. Just wanted to get some extra work done.”

“What are you up to then?”

“Just finishing up some charting. I’m trying to identify some of the stars we see here.”

“Yeah? And how’s that going?”

Ryan sighs. “Slowly.”

“Can I see?”

“Uh, sure. Hold on.” Ryan fiddles with the display settings on his datapad until he can drag his stars and display them in the room. Swirling, silver stars float around gently. Jeremy sits up against the wall and looks at amazement at Ryan’s work.

“Wow.”

Ryan feels himself blushing and clears his throat. He taps one of the stars on his datapad and the corresponding display lights up across the room. “That is Euripides A-63, a yellow dwarf around which the planets Zelich and Hermenn orbit. Have you ever been there?”

“Holiday once,” Jeremy says. “Like the entire planet of Zelich is tropical and temperate. Beautiful beaches _and_ sunsets.”

“Yeah. Euripides is a nice star to be around. No solar flares, just the right size.”

He goes through a few more and points out some the constellation designs he’s been thinking off for fun.

“I see a circle,” Jeremy says

“I’m not surprised.”

“We should call it the circle God.”

“Okay, Jeremy. Whatever you say.”

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.12.25**

They receive a transmission from _The Hunter’s Achievement_ around dinner time. Geoff’s face fills up the screen as they surround the screen in the lab.

“Look at you lovely bunch of explorers,” he says. “I like the beard, Ryan. Makes you a lot less clean cut.”

Ryan touches his chin faintly. “I haven’t had the time to shave recently.”

“Still. I like it. Nice to see you four are all still alive. Gavin.”

“Geoffrey.”

“Hey, Geoff,” Michael says. “This replicator coffee is shit. What the hell?”

Geoff laughs. “Just one of the many perks of being an astroneer, little buddy. Well, seeing as we are at the end of your little expedition, it’s time to go over some protocol. Are you in need of anything before we send down a carrier? Food? Water? Hand lotion? _Lube_?”

“Well, Ryan did break both of his legs,” Jeremy says.

“Did he now?” Geoff looks straight at Ryan. There’s a small smile on his face.

“Yeah,” he says sheepishly. “I kind of broke bo-both of them.”

“Man, I was expecting this from Gavin, least of all _Commander Haywood._ ”

“Ye of little faith,” Gavin mutters.

“Shut up. Anyway, I’ll make sure I send down an extra person or two to help you out. I look forward to being treated to a slideshow of all your photos.” He ends the communication.

“He’s such a grumpy little minge,” Gavin says. “Always picks on me.”

 _“Always picks on me, poor lil’ Gavvers,_ ” Michael mimics. “Get over it.”

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.12.26.**

The crew of Expedition Wild West are ready to leave. The base will be left where it is for future expeditions for other crews. They pack up their personal belongings—and Jeremy says goodbye to God—and suit up one last time. They help Ryan into his and wheel him out of the airlock as the carrier lands. He’s loaded on first by two medical personnel and secured. The ensigns strap themselves down and once everyone is secure and the doors locked, they pull off their helmets and look out the viewing ports.

It’s been documented that after an extended stay on a planet some expedition crewmates may experience a sense of longing to return to the planet. Ryan can honestly say he doesn’t feel anything. He’s enjoyed his time there and he’s come to learn some things about himself, but he’s been cooped up for too long and he needs to go out among the stars once more.

_Goodbye, Sorola-6. May I never see you again._

“Goodbye, God,” Jeremy says as he waves at the window.

Michael and Gavin laugh. Ryan leans his head back against his seat and smiles.

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.1.8**

Ryan gets his casts off today and makes a full recovery. He’s still told to take it easy during this exercises as he rebuilds his strength, but other than that he’s free to walk around on his own. It’s better than being confined to his quarters for the most part. Now he can actually get to work, not Expedition Wild West work but his own. Lindsay has done well in keeping up with his experiments over the past year and has even made some progress. He’ll have to get her a gift on their next shore leave. Something of the feline variety, he thinks. She’d enjoy that.

It’s weird adjusting to life on the ship again. While everything is familiar and his own, he finds himself alone once more except for his fellow scientists. He understands that Michael, Gavin, and Jeremy all have their own duties and own quarters on the ship. Gavin has his own lab on deck three, four below Ryan’s own station. Michael spends most of his time on maintenance duty with the warp core. Jeremy sticks to med bay. There isn’t really anything bringing Ryan to them, and he can’t force himself to go visit them when he’s off the clock or if he’s in the mess hall for dinner.

The plant that Gavin found for him sits on his desk in his personal quarters. Whenever he sits down, he stares at it longingly. He’s had to deal with feelings of yearning before. It’s weird. They live on the same ship as him. He knows them as well as he knows himself, and yet. Something is keeping him from reaching out to them. Every morning he wakes up and decides that today will be the day. He’ll either go to them in person or even send them a message across the ship. But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t.

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.1.23**

Ryan is taking it easy in the mess hall. He and First Officer Jack Pattillo have taken up residence in the back corner as they play a simple game of cribbage. It’s one of their favourite past times, as neither can find anyone else to indulge of their love for simple card and strategy games.

He likes Jack and considers him to be one of his few (one of two, really) close friends. Jack is steady. Jack is dependable. Jack is the real captain on this ship, but don’t tell Geoff that. Geoff believes differently.

“You seem different,” Jack says.

Ryan frowns as he moves his pegs on the board. “Different how?”

“Well, for starters, you’re slouching. And you have a beard.”

Ryan scowls and straightens his spine automatically. “Why does everyone need to mention the beard? So what?”

Jack laughs. “It’s just, you know, I think it’s nice seeing you so relaxed for once. You seem more sociable now. It’s nice.”

Ryan relaxes a bit and looks at what he’s been dealt. Jack has always been so astute at reading people. He’s always been able to relax around Jack. He has a soothing presence around him, always eager to help. And he’s always found that he’s been able to talk more freely with Jack about his issues.

“How was the expedition?” Jack asks.

“It was good. Staying alive wasn’t too bad. The ensigns were . . . they were impressive.”

“Oh, come on. Just impressive? You know, Geoff talked to all of them and they have nothing but good things to say about you.”

Ryan makes the point of keeping his eyes glues to his cards. He clears his throat.

“They really like you, you know.”

“I do, too,” he says truthfully. “They were . . . nice.”

Jack nods and decides to not push the issue any further. Until Geoff shows up, that is.

He throws himself down on the seat closest to Jack. “Well, well, well,” he says. “If it isn’t my favourite recluse of a scientist. Have you been avoiding me?”

“Not intentionally,” Ryan says.

“I can’t believe that a man with your social skills managed to befriend those three ensigns. It’s really quite beautiful.” He wipes away an imaginary tear. “My skills as a matchmaker impress even me sometimes.” Jack chuckles and moves his pegs. Even Ryan has to smile. “And yet.” He leans his elbows on the table. Jack is forced to move their game. “And yet, you’re still here doing the same old thing as before.”

“What’s wrong with playing cribbage with Jack?”

“It’s _sad_.”

“Are you calling Jack sad?”

“No, I’m calling _you_ sad. Playing cribbage with Jack is fine. All the power to you. But if you only play cribbage with Jack, _that’s_ what I’m calling sad.” Geoff reaches out and sets his hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “The ensigns _really_ like you. And if you let them in, you won’t be alone again.”

Geoff is a blunt type of person, getting to the root of the problem quickly and without mincing his words. It’s who he is. You either like him for it or you don’t.

“But anyway.” Geoff withdraws and sits back in his seat. “We have a month long shore leave coming up in a few days. And I think we all deserve a little fun in the sun.”

* * *

 

**Stardate 2655.1.27**

Ryan is finishing packing his bags for the shore leave on Ninwe. It’s a temperate paradise with vast forests and crystal blue lakes. He thinks he’ll enjoy it.

In the meantime _The Hunter’s Achievement_ will be undergoing warp core maintenance and standard decontamination as well as hull integrity tests. Standard Fleet stuff that Ryan couldn’t be bothered with. He makes sure to take Gavin’s plant with him when he goes. He likes having it around, the soothing glow it emits often lulls him to sleep.

His door chimes and he crosses his room to answer it. On the other side are the ensigns, packed and ready to go, dressed in civilian clothing.

“Oh,” Ryan says. He wasn’t expecting this. “Hey.”

“Hey, to you, too,” Michael says with an edge to his tone. “You been avoiding us?”

“Um. Listen, I-I’m not exactly good with the, uh, fr-friend thing.”

“No shit.”

“Told you we’d have to make the first move,” Gavin says.

“You all packed?” Jeremy says and pushes his way into Ryan’s room. Michael and Gavin soon follow.

“This is lovely,” Gavin says. “You’ve got so many windows!”

“And you don’t have to bunk with anyone,” Michael says. “Sweet!”

“This your bag?” Jeremy pointed at his case.

“Uh, yeah.” Ryan frowns. “You-you don’t have to carry it.”

“No worries. Now come on, the shuttle’s about to leave.” Jeremy closes the case and wheels it along the ground. Michael follows him, and Gavin latches onto Ryan’s arm.

“Come on, Ryan. It’s time for another lovely adventure!”

They check into the Fleet mandated quarters. They’ll be sharing rooms, but they’re more expansive than what they had to deal with back on Sorola-6. Once again, Ryan is sharing with Jeremy and Michael with Gavin (go figure).

Once they have their gear and have stowed away their clothing and personal affects, Michael and Gavin barrel their way in. Gavin throws himself down on Ryan’s bed.

“Saints alive, it’s nice to be on shore leave,” he says.

“You basically just got off of a yearlong vacation,” Ryan says.

“That wasn’t a vacation,” Michael says. “That was work. That was _hard_ work.”

“Says the guy who built a dune buggy and then went sledding around on the back of it.”

“ _Creative_ work.”

Ryan concedes.

“So what’s on the plan for today, Ryan?” Gavin says, stretching out like starfish on his bed.

“What do you mean ‘what’s the plan’?”

“You always have a plan, Ryan,” Jeremy says. “What are we going to do?”

Okay. So maybe he _did_ look up a few options as to what tourists usually do will on Ninwe, and he did have half the mind to check a few of them out while he’s here.

Once of the options is hang gliding. There are stations at the tallest trees in the forests (which can grow to an impressive four hundred feet and beyond) from which people can jump from and glide down to  cleared meadows. He thought that might be interesting.

“What do you think of hang gliding?” he asks. He gets three very enthusiastic yes’s and they conclude their meeting.

Michael and Gavin are the first to bound out, eager and excited to get going. Jeremy stops by at the door. He looks over his shoulder. “You coming, Ryan?”

“Yeah.”

When Jeremy holds out his hand, Ryan doesn’t even hesitate. He reaches out and takes it.

It’s not as easy or seamless as Ryan would like it to be in leaving behind his old social skills. He still can’t put words to what he’s feeling or how to explain to those he likes how much they mean to him. But it’s better now. The ensigns work it out for him, and he realizes that he doesn’t need to overthink it. Gavin, Michael, Jeremy. They take charge for him. He doesn’t need to be on the clock all the time. He doesn’t need to have a plan for everything.

And whatever comes out of this relationship, whether it stays the same in its chaotic nature or matures into something more stable, Ryan is sure to cherish it.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at [tumblr](http://staranon95.tumblr.com/)


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